Back from the Break with Pesto Pasta with Sausage

Recipe name: Pesto Pasta with Sausage
Source: Pennies and Pounds
Servings: 4
Cookbook date: January 7

1 pound pasta
2 tablespoons almonds (approximately)
4 cloves garlic
1 bunch cilantro
salt and pepper
1/4 c. olive oil
Reserved pasta cooking water
1/4 c. grated pecorino romano
1 pound turkey smoked sausage or kielbasa

Tim here once again. We took a little hiatus over the holiday break and now we are back in full force, well back posting at least. As always we made a few modifications to the recipe. We used dried cilantro and Parmesan cheese rather than Ramano.

Cooking the dish was pretty straight forward. First you start a large pot of water on the stove top to boil. Cook the pasta until it's al dente or still a bit chewy. The great thing about this recipe is that you can prepare the pesto while the water is working up to a boil.

To make the pesto you combine the almonds, garlic, cilantro and salt and pepper in a food processor. Once everything is chopped up you can drizzle in the olive oil. About now the water should be ready for the pasta. Once you put in the pasta to cook you can start on the sausage.

I cooked the sausage on a large skillet on medium heat until it was browned. Before you strain the pasta sauce make sure you reserve a cup of the water. Use this water for the pesto sauce in the food processor and process until you get to a smoother consistency. Now all you have to do is put it all together. I decided to to toss the pasta, pesto, Parmesan cheese and sausage in the pot I cooked the pasta in to reduce the number of dishes. If it still seems to dry you can add in some of the left over pasta water.

While we both enjoyed this dish but we felt that the pesto sauce was lacking. If we had to do it over we would make sure we used a fresh bunch of cilantro and made the pesto a little more saucy.

A twist on the sausage biscuit

Recipe name: Sausage biscuits
source: no idea
servings: 6-8
Cookbook date: April 8
Date prepared: May 13
1/2 lb pork breakfast sausage
1 1/2 cups baking mix
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp milk
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, break up sausage and cook over medium heat until thoroughly cooked. Drain on paper towels. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix baking mix, cheese and sausage until well distributed. In a separate small bowl, beat together egg, milk and salt and pepper. Add to baking mixture and blend until mix forms a ball. Shape into 24 balls, using about 1 tbsp of dough for each. place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until browned and cooked through. Serve immediately.
Well, as you can tell by the picture, these biscuits won't be winning any beauty contests. This is partially my fault, in hind-sight. I was much too hasty in scooping out and shaping the dough (ok, full confession...I didn't shape the dough at all!). This was a mistake and one that I will change for the future. Also, this recipe only yielded 12 biscuits, not 24 as promised.
Tim (the husband) didn't like the taste, and I only liked them ok. As it is, I feel that the sausage completely overwhelms the biscuit; more subtlety of flavor would be appreciated by yours truly. In an attempt to take the sausage taste down a notch, I dug around for something sweet to put on the biscuit. I tried honey first, with disappointing results. Then I found some pear preserves and was quite pleased with the taste!
I'm going to keep the recipe, but not without some significant recipe adjustments. Here's what I'll do next time: double all the ingredients except for the sausage and the cheese. Increase the cheese by 1/4 cup. Leave the sausage as is. These will go great with fried eggs and some fresh fruit.

expense: ****
time:***
taste:**