Baked Rigatoni w. Honeynut Squash, Sausage & Kale
...and everything else I made this week.
Getting right into it. Here’s the 3 best things I made this week:
Baked Rigatoni w. Honeynut Squash, Sausage & Kale: I made this THREE times in the last week. We ate it twice and one batch was given to a friend. It’s an extremely cozy baked pasta dish. Everyone who ate it this week left the table uncomfortably full because it’s hard to stop going back for more. The full recipe is at the bottom of this email and is visible to paid subscribers. A subscription casts $5/month or $40/ a year and you get access to not only this recipe, but ALL past paid recipes.
Chicken Marsala: GREAT weeknight dinner-you can prep all the ingredients ahead and have them waiting to be cooked. In a nutshell, here’s how- Dust thinly sliced chicken breasts with flour and salt. Pan fry them in a large skillet with some kind of fat. Oil + butter or ghee are great. Remove them from the pan and add in LOTS of mushrooms. More than you think. I used a combo of cremini, oyster, trumpet, beech and shiitake. Season generously with salt and a sprig of fresh rosemary, thyme or sage. Add a heavy amount of chopped garlic once the mushrooms have been cooking for a while. Deglaze the pan with a big glug of Marsala wine. Followed by chicken stock. Start reducing it to make the sauce. Meanwhile boil pasta. whisk a 1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch into 1/4 cup of water and then pour it into the sauce- this thickens it. Optional to add a touch of cream. Nestle the chicken back in and cook for 1-2 minutes. Garnish with lots of chopped parsley. Serve with the pasta and parm.
Pork Shoulder with Braised Kale: I made this at the same time as the chicken marsala, with the intention that we’d eat it the next day. I rubbed a boneless pork shoulder with: Olive oil + Salt + Pepper + Ground fennel seeds + Grated garlic + Minced Sage. Placed that in a large roasting pan, covered tightly with foil and baked @ 350° for 2 hours. Nestle a large amount of chopped kale around the pork roast, tossed it around a bit in the juices and baked for another 30 minutes. The roast should be falling apart when you test it with a fork and the kale should be very soft. I served this with baked potatoes. The leftovers were amazing on little slider buns.
What I’m Loving This Week:
RX Vanilla Almond Butter: My best friend tipped me off to this stuff. She warned me of the sticker shock: $9 for the jar. But WOAH. It’s hands down the best almond butter I’ve tasted. I plan to dip dates into it this week.
Long Kitchen Tweezers: I keep an array of tweezers in my food styling kit, which comes to every photoshoot with me. But recently, I’ve been keeping a long pair of tweezers in my home kitchen. They’re really great for flipping things and getting the pickles out of the bottom of the jar.
Serves 6
How to fry sage: Simply heat a little bit of olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, drop in the sage leaves and fry until they look crispy, about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and fish out the sage leaves. This is totally optional but it looks cool and adds extra sage flavor.
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed