First recipe with N and I working together! We were both excited about this comfort food recipe, and it did not disappoint.

This dish pushed me slightly outside of my comfort zone in the cooking world: I have never cooked sausage. As the smells of sizzling meat filled our kitchen, I remarked how unfamiliar and exciting it felt to be trying something new. The goal of this resolution is to push me to explore new recipes and improve my techniques, and this meal felt like my first true venture from the familiar. The resolution is already paying off.

While I can see this dish coming back into our repertoire, without optimizing some of the steps that took us a while to get through, it might have to be a weekend-only option. If it were a weeknight, I would get too hungry before all of the steps were completed.

ORECCHIETTE WITH SPICY SAUSAGE AND PARMESAN

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients were all delicious, but I didn’t have much of them handy in my kitchen. Overall, pretty easy to gather and I happily put them in my shopping cart.

Start by getting the sausage out of the casing. N took the lead here, and he found it easiest to cut the sausage in half and separate the insides from the casing that way. The crumbled sausage interiors go into a pan with olive oil and get cooked through.

N: I’m sure there’s a better way to get rid of the casing and accomplish the same thing. Maybe getting a larger Jimmy Dean sausage would have been better.

While he was working with the sausages, I started cutting the onions (and crying). They need to be sliced thin, but I decided to cut them even smaller (more crying).

A benefit of having both of us working on this recipe: While he was minding the cooking, I was able to grate the lemon zest and clean up behind us, which made the final clean up much easier. It’s always a good idea to clean up as you go.

Once the sausage is cooked, it is set aside until assembly. Next up is the onions. This takes the longest time here, but the more correctly the onions are cooked, the more delicious the final product is. I recommend sticking with the 30 minute recommendation. Cook and cook and cook these onions, and they become sweet and soft and perfect.

While this is all happening, you should start boiling the pasta. We waited too long to get the pasta water started, so we were twiddling our thumbs once the onions were done and were still waiting on the pasta to finish cooking.

Once the pasta is almost cooked, grab some pasta water and dump the rest out. Put the drained pasta back in the pot and combine with the cooked ingredients and a ton of spinach. We didn’t use all of the spinach that was called for here, but it still used an entire package and made for a very green dish.

After the spinach melts into the pasta, add cream, lemon zest, Parmesan cheese, and a bit of the leftover pasta water. Stir the pasta goodness to marry all of the flavors and serve.

It. Was. So. Good. Comfort food to the max. We both thought the only thing we would swap would be the spinach. Both of us thought that peas would be a great replacement for the greenery, which would also add a fun texture.

Overall review: We loved it. So excited to eat the leftovers!

N: Yeah! Not too bad!

As you may remember from the last post, I had planned ahead for this recipe. I bought all of the ingredients in advance, I decided which day I would make the dish, and I got home not starving. I was ready to call this easy recipe a mega-win.

Julia’s description was basically a story about my childhood: her parents were obsessed with Soy Vey, and this recipe features her version of that versatile marinade. I figured this would just be me making my own Soy Vey, pouring it over salmon, and baking it. Spoilers: Not only was the “easy” recipe actually pretty difficult, but the end result was not my favorite. To give this recipe some credit, the caption explains that this is a way to convert non-fish-fans to reconsider their stance, and being a fish-superfan, I expect my fish to be… fishier.

Here’s how it went down.

ROASTED SALMON WITH MAPLE AND SOY

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients that I had to buy: salmon, ginger, sesame seeds. Rating: Very easy last minute ingredient list to pull together. That said, you have to figure out your own sides to make it a meal.

First step is to prep the ingredients as instructed. I bought a ginger root, which meant that my first real task was to mince the ginger. That took a while, but I’m proud to say no fingers were harmed in the making of the mince.

Next step is to assemble the marinade. I had already put the ginger into the assigned “small bowl”, so I added the olive oil, maple syrup, and soy sauce and stirred. I could have eaten just that part, and I basically did. For a side, I made basmati rice (based on what I had in the pantry already), and I made a stripped down version of the marinade for the rice: Freshly grated ginger, soy sauce, and a hint of maple syrup. It’s actually really good! I might also try this marinade on a grilled fish (instead of a roasted one) and see if the ginger flavor cuts through the grill marks.

This was where the recipe and I started to differ in opinions.

Cut the salmon into one-inch cubes. I mean, smaller pieces cut the cook time, sure, but as someone who likes my fish on the rarer side, it makes it way less likely to get the type of cook I like when it’s sliced that small.

In addition to cutting the fish, she says to have the cubes with the skin removed. For those who don’t know, removing skin from raw salmon without losing too much of the fish in the process is not easy. Having already spent too much time making a mess with the ginger-mincing, I decided to do a “taste test”: Does removing the skin really affect the end product?

The photo below shows little indication of physical differences between the Skins and the Non-Skins. For those keeping score, right hand side of the pan is the Skins.

Last step before cooking was put the marinade all over the fish, easy peasy. Then into the oven for 10 minutes, super fast. You will be happy to know that a lazy approach to this recipe is totally possible and tastes the same! No over-cooking, no ultra-stickiness, no discernible differences at all. Skin for the win!

I know Julia’s reasoning behind having the fish be skin-free was to serve it to picky eaters who don’t think they like fish. I can say that as a person who likes fish, eating around the skin doesn’t freak me out and is not worth the effort to remove before cooking.

Top with sesame seeds, take a photo, and it’s ready to eat!

Overall review: As noted above, I’m a fish person and I prefer my salmon on the less-cooked side. By strictly following this recipe, I ended up cooking the fish past the point I like eating it. When making this recipe again, I might skip the cutting of the fish altogether and just use this marinade like my parents use Soy Vey: Cover the whole piece fish and toss it in the oven to cook until it’s just done.

Final thoughts: Use the marinade on a larger piece of fish and cook it to my preferred temperature, and it might make the dinner rotation, skin or no skin.

This was a big recipe to tackle as my first one, but having sampled this before, I knew the finished product was going to be a good one, which helped keep me motivated. But let me help set the scene for how my first cooking resolution went down.

Picture me starving at 7:15pm heading home with no groceries in my apartment. I went to the local (not cheap) grocery store, armed with the photos on my phone of this recipe and the next one. I wandered through the aisles gathering everything on this list, double-checking the sizes with the recipe. I bought all of the ingredients except one for the next recipe (not a critical ingredient), and headed back to my apartment.

Fast forward to 7:45, I turn on the oven and start digging through the recipe and realize a few things: 1) I did not have tinfoil which will make cleanup more annoying, and 2) I bought HALF the amount of turkey (the main ingredient), which means I was going to have to do math in my head throughout the brand new recipe.

Looking back on this whole first day, it made me realize I need to double check the supplies needs for each recipe as well as the ingredients list, and that assuming I will have time to pick up ingredients on a weeknight without being cranky about it is not the best approach. If I’m going to stick with this, I’ll need to do more preparation in advance so I am able to stay focused on getting the food IN MY BELLY.

Ok, onto the good stuff!

TURKEY AND RICOTTA MEATBALLS

From SMALL VICTORIES by Julia Turshen

Ingredients include the obvious, plus basil, parsley, parmesan cheese, whole peeled tomatoes, and garlic. I also picked up Angel Hair for eating. Basic rating: Easy to find, things I already like.

First item in the recipe was my least favorite alone and already hungry: Hand crushing the whole peeled tomatoes. It ended up getting all over my shirt no matter what I did, which meant I ended up changing outfits. Julia’s recommendation was to give this task to someone to help out with, and honestly I think it would have been more fun to have tomato juice squirting everywhere with someone else to laugh with. Me by myself getting tomato juice on my PJ shirt was not that fun.

Next thing was to add this to a pot with sliced garlic and olive oil and voila! A sauce is made! This sits for almost the rest of the recipe with minimal attention needed.

Something I also didn’t do well: Finely chop the herbs. I cheated and tried to use the same knife to slice the garlic and chop the herbs, and I really needed to commit to a bigger, sharper knife for the herb preparation. The finer the chop on the herbs, the easier the meatball making, and the less leafy the final product would have been.

Once the herbs were chopped, I added minced garlic, ricotta, parmesan cheese, and salt, and I got ready to mix.

Mixing was fun, I gotta admit. And getting them into golf-ball-sized portions was not a difficult task. In the full portion of the recipe, the number of meatballs might fill the whole pan, but in my case (half the recipe) I had plenty of room to let them spread out.

At this point, my sauce was done, so I turned it off while the meatballs cooked. That way, I wouldn’t over reduce the sauce before the meatballs were finished. Given the timing of each of these recipe pieces, I think this would be a great meal for a group. There are multiple possible stopping points, and it makes a large quantity of meatballs.

Because I was cooking this to eat immediately, I put on the pasta water to boil while the meatballs were in the oven.

Everything after that was about assembly! Put the meatballs in the sauce, finish cooking the pasta, and then put everything on the plate. In the end, this recipe was pretty easy and will probably be a good one to break out when company comes.

I did most of this cooking in the apartment by myself, and by the time I was assembling, my boyfriend (N) came home and was able to eat dinner with me. While he did not experience much of the process here, his review is similar to mine in the end.

N: Overall, pretty solid. I give it a 3.7 out of 3.8.

I had this for lunch today, and I am happy to report that leftovers heat up really well and make for excellent work-friendly lunch food.

Basic overview: YUM.