Tag: bell pepper

Categories
Main Dish Side Dish

Make ‘mushroom’ for lots of fresh veggies this summer

Mixing fresh vegetables and sausage with some simple seasonings makes for a great summer dish.
Mixing fresh vegetables and sausage with some simple seasonings makes for a great summer dish.

I’ve mentioned before that my gardening ability is pretty sad to say the least.

Part of that is due to my inability to figure out how much water to dump on my plants, and part of that is due to a thieving squirrel, who convinced me for most of a summer that my tomatoes were vanishing into thin air just before they were ripe enough to pick.

Thank goodness for good friends, local grocery stores and farmer’s markets now that I’ve mostly given up my goals of urban farming.

And with it being the time of year for gardens to begin bursting with lots of great veggies, I’ve started getting really impatient to put them on our dinner table as much as possible.

This week’s recipe is one that Joey and I decided to create while standing in the produce department of our local grocery store last week, so while I’m sure there are dozens of recipes much like it online, we really just made this one up as we went along.

A couple thoughts: if you’d rather make this a vegetarian dish, ditch the sausage and toss in some more veggies. The mushrooms give this a nice, meaty flavor all on their own. Also, once zucchini and summer squash is ready, it would be an amazing addition to this as well, cut into 1/2-inch rounds or half moons.

Print

Summer Vegetables and Sausage

Mixing fresh vegetables and sausage with some simple seasonings makes for a great summer dish.
Course Main Course, Side Dish
Keyword bell pepper, mushrooms, sausage, tomatoes, vegetables

Ingredients

  • 2 bell peppers any color
  • 8 to 10 ounces grape or cherry tomatoes
  • 8 ounces whole baby bella mushrooms
  • 3 about 9 ounces bratwursts or sausages of your choice
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • black pepper to taste
  • garlic salt to taste
  • onion powder to taste

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
  • Wash and prepare the vegetables. Slice the bell peppers into 2-inch by 1/2-inch pieces. Slice the mushrooms in half. Leave the tomatoes whole.
  • Slice the sausages into 1/2-inch rounds. (We used a chicken, spinach and feta sausage that was out of this world.)
  • Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil and spread all the ingredients out on it. Drizzle with olive oil and then sprinkle on your seasonings.
  • Use your hands to coat the ingredients in the oil and seasonings and spread everything out into as much of a single layer as you can.
  • Bake for 12 minutes and then give the ingredients a stir. Bake for another 12 minutes or until the sausage is done all the way through and the tomatoes are starting to burst.
  • Serve immediately.

We had leftovers of this and ate it a couple nights later after mixing it with a little marinara sauce and serving it over spaghetti. It was awesome.

There wasn’t much spring to enjoy this year, but at least that means summer gardens can get underway.

For my part, I’ll stick to keeping some flowers alive this year and get my veggies elsewhere. That sneaky squirrel will have to go bother someone else for his meals this summer.

This piece first appeared in print on May 24, 2018.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Main Dish

Can’t stop thinking ‘gumbout’ New Orleans dish

New Orleans shrimp and sausage gumbo is a spicy, filling meal.
New Orleans shrimp and sausage gumbo is a spicy, filling meal.

Sometimes I let my fridge do the talking when I’m trying to figure out what to make for dinner, so when I had several leftover stalks of celery, most of an onion and lots of diced bell peppers at my disposal, I took to the Internet for a solution.

Much to Joey’s delight, I decided on trying a recipe for gumbo.

I headed to the grocery store to finish out my ingredient list and realized that one item on the list, gumbo file, which is made from sassafras leaves, is not sold in most Kansas grocery stores (if someone knows a hidden spot it exists, let me know).

After doing a little research, I decided to get a little weird and substitute for the gumbo file with a bit of root beer, since it has much the same flavor. I tried my gumbo before and after adding it, and I had to admit that it had a nice influence on the taste, so just go with me on this one.

I found this recipe on the blog “Little Spice Jar.” You can find it at http://littlespicejar.com/new-orleans-gumbo-shrimp-sausage/. I added more garlic and changed up the type of Tabasco (which I highly recommend), and of course, subbed in root beer in my version.

Print

New Orleans Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo

New Orleans shrimp and sausage gumbo is a spicy, filling meal.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Cajun
Keyword Andouille sausage, bell pepper, celery, gumbo, New Orleans, onions, shrimp

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup high-heat oil I used canola
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 onion diced (I used yellow)
  • 2 bell peppers diced (any color)
  • 4 stalks celery diced
  • 8-10 cloves minced garlic
  • 8 ounces Andouille sausage sliced
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning I used Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning
  • 2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce I used chipotle Tabasco
  • 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
  • 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
  • 14.5 ounces stewed tomatoes and juices diced
  • 2 pounds raw shrimp peeled and de-veined
  • 4 tablespoons root beer
  • White rice for serving

Instructions

  • Heat oil over medium-high heat in a Dutch oven. Whisk in the flour until it is smooth and then stir continuously for about 20 minutes or until the roux turns to a medium brown (the author calls it “peanut butter color”).
  • Stir in the onions, bell peppers and celery and keep stirring until they soften (about 10 minutes).
  • Add the garlic and sausage and keep stirring until you can really smell the garlic.
  • Now add the bay leaves, Cajun seasoning, Tabasco sauce, cayenne, chicken broth and tomatoes, making sure to scrape the pan to get all the good bits off the bottom.
  • Bring the mixture to a very low boil and lower the heat to medium-low and leave the lid on for about 15 minutes.
  • Stir in the shrimp and cook for about 10 more minutes or until the shrimp is done (they will curl up a bit and become opaque). Add the root beer and salt and pepper to taste.
  • Remove the bay leaves and serve the gumbo over white rice.

We reheated this on the stove over the next week so as not to overcook the shrimp, and it was good every single time. It makes a ton of food, especially when you’re serving it over rice, so we had quite a few meals of gumbo before it was all gone.

It’s definitely on the spicy side, so you could leave out the cayenne and replace it with paprika to tame it a bit if you like, but it was super good with the amount of kick it had.

It also helped me clean out my fridge and gave me a new use for root beer that I wasn’t expecting.

Sometimes you have to be inventive and flexible in your Midwestern kitchen.

This piece first appeared in print on April 5, 2018.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Exit mobile version