Category: Pasta

Penne Adriana

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1 lb. penne pasta
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 package spicy Italian sausage
1 package mushrooms, thickly sliced
1/2 cup beef or chicken broth
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
3 cups fresh spinach, roughly chopped or use baby spinach
3 Tbsp parmesan cheese.

Cook pasta to al dente in salted water. Heat olive oil in a frying pan, and cook sausage and mushrooms until sausage is cooked through. Remove from heat and slice into 1/2″ thick slices. Add back into frying pan, and add broth, and pepper. Stir well, and add spinach. Cook until spinach is just wilted.

Serve in bowls, and sprinkle with parmesan and another twist of black pepper. This makes me hungry just thinking about it, and rated a “Yum!” in 2003.

Update:  This looked so good that I made it for supper last night.  I only had smoked sausage, and no mushrooms, so I added more pepper and a pinch of red pepper flakes.  It was so amazingly delicious.  We’ve grown to really love cooked spinach and I think you could add 4 or even 5 cups of spinach.

Spaetzle

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Spaetzle is a delicious soft pasta that’s made fresh and then fried in butter.  It’s a German staple.  My  mom used to make Spaetzle when I was younger, using a metal colander and wooden spoon to push the super soft dough into a pot of boiling, salted water.  I have a way cool spaetzle maker (thank you Colleen B!) that looks like a grater with a hopper on top, but the colander and spoon method works just fine, too.

2 1/8 cup flour  (500 gms for anyone who cooks that way.)
1 cup water
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg
Butter

Mix the dough really well. It will be very sticky and soft. Start a large pot of salted water boiling, then turn down to a simmer. If you’re using a colander, dump about a cup of the dough at a time in it, and holding the colander over the simmering water, start scraping the wooden spoon back and forth across the bottom, so the dough drops out of the bottom holes. The noodles cook very quickly, so have a slotted spoon ready to take them out of the pot.

Meantime, melt some butter in a frying pan. When you pull the noodles out of the boiling water, shake as much water out as you can, and drop them into the melted butter to fry for a minute or so.

If you have an awesome spaetzle maker like mine, you just put the grater portion on top of the pot, dump in the dough in the hopper and slide it back and forth over the water.

Makes a ton of noodles and is so delicious.