Spaghetti with Mushroom and Sausage Tomato Sauce

This one all started when SO asked me where the tomato sauce was.  As in the big can of store bought sauce one would dump on spaghetti.  It was getting late, and was a weeknight. But still, a certain amount of righteous indignation welled up in me. I wasn't going to let the late hour and our tired old bones get in the way of doing something a bit better than dumping a can of sauce on spaghetti. We've all done that once in a while, but generally as a student.  In any case, I promptly took over and rooted around in the fridge. There wasn't much as we were due for groceries, but still it would work out fine.

Ingredients for the mushroom sauce

I ran down to the freezer and pulled out a package of sausages from the local butcher, and ran them under water to get them unstuck and somewhat unthawed. The rest of the raw materials ended up being onion, garlic, 2 jalapeno peppers, and a variety of wild mushrooms from a previous recipe. I took the casings off the sausages and started browning it. From there it went pretty quickly.

Mushroom and Sausage tomato sauce simmering away

Simmering away for 20 minutes was all it took. We didn't have any fresh pasta, but oh the sacrifices we make (major-eye-roll).

Spaghetti with Mushroom and Sausage Tomato Sauce

Next Time: I didn't even taste the jalapeno, so either eliminate it or bump up the spice

Me: 8/10

SO: 8.5/10

SSO: 2/10

Roast Chicken

I really like Michael Smith.  The chef, that is. He talks a lot about simple flavours, fresh ingredients, and he doesn't worry too much about exact measurements. Plus, in his cookbooks he actually explains why he does things a certain way. Imagine that, a chef actually giving away some secrets. Anyway, SO came home with a free-range, local, super-awesome blah blah chicken from the butcher. Not much more thought than to roast it in some fashion. Flipping through some Chef Smith books, in one recipe he advocates throwing everything in the roasting pan and just...well cooking the lot.  I closed the book, and started rummaging through the fridge. Here's what I found - not a bad hall, since we did groceries yesterday.

Roast Chicken ingredients - minus the chicken

So tomatoes, some carrots, the ubiquitous onions and potatoes, fresh rosemary, garlic, asparagus and lemon. That'll all do nicely. So now we just have to season the chicken with simple ground pepper and salt, and roughly chop everything and dump unceremoniously around the chicken. This is what is looked like.

Roast Chicken - before cooking

Was it too much?  Too little? Would it overcook or under cook?  Pshaw, doesn't matter too much. I wanted to just do it quickly and simply and see how it turns out.  Threw in the rosemary whole, and the lemon - well I've made the mistake before of putting in too much lemon slices. Doing that gives it a lemon flavour, sure, but imparts too much bitterness with all the rind.  So 20 minutes per pound at 400 F, and here is the result.

Roast Chicken

Wow, looks awesome. No basting, no stirring, nothing. I checked the temperature - supposedly 165F in the breast and 175F in the thigh, but opinion seems to vary on this so use your own judgement. The family was happy, and the chicken was wickedly moist - just unbelievable really, and the skin was nice and crispy.

And the bonus in all this, you can make some chicken stock with the carcass afterwards. See notes in the recipe below.

Baked Salmon with Mushroom Risotto

Why is it that salmon is so tasty? Lots of flavour not matter what you do to it - you almost cannot ruin it, except perhaps to dry it out. Grilling on the BBQ, poached, fried, raw as in sashimi, or baked like this recipe. Plus it has the much vaunted omega-3 fatty acids, blah blah.  I like white fish as well, but it seems to me that half the time it turns out awesome and the rest of the time it is just flavourless or "fishy" tasting. Anyway, one of my go-to cooks, Michael Smith, suggests baking at a low temperature for a change. Wow, great idea. No grill marks, but much improved smooth tenderness. You can throw just about any sauce you want on it, and voila.

As for the risotto, it's something you just have to make once in a while.  Kind of like eggs, it is easy to make but difficult to make really well.  To get just the right balance and avoid all the problem takes a bit of practice. There's lots of advice out there as well, for example this well thought out page courtesy of Alton Brown. Parts of it disagree with his own recipe I found on the Food Network, but we all change and grow as chefs - why would he be any different. In any case, I would take advice from a reputable chef like him, or Mark McEwan which is where I took most of the queues for this recipe.

Baked Salmon with Mushroom Risotto

I'm not the hugest fan of asparagus, but I'm constantly trying to find ways to make it awesome. It goes well enough in the risotto. Luckily didn't overcook it so it was good. I found that it overpowered the mushrooms just a bit however.

Next Time: I'd go heavier on the mushrooms and leave out the asparagus

Me: 9/10
SO: 9/10
SSO: 4/10