Canned Spinach and Regrets

There are many times that i regret, fully regret, telling people i know about this page. I even knew when i was sending out those "hey, look what I'm doing" emails that it was a mistake. SUCH A MISTAKE. There is so much that I'd like to talk about anonymously that i just can't now. And that sucks. I wish i had been more honest with myself about what i would want to bitch about. Ah, such is life.

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Harking back to my post* about needing recipes, I'm going to post the one that Da Nator* sent to me via e-mail because she couldn't get into my comments for some reason that day. I'm posting it because not only is it funny, but really, really good. And because I'm thinking of what's for dinner tonight and this is the winner:

*Also, for some reason Blogger won't let me publish this with links to my post nor Da Nator, so i guess you can figure out how to get to them by yourselves. Stupid blogger.

Here's a quick & easy recipe, with no standard measurements.

You'll need:
Pasta of your choice (whole wheat if you're the healthy type)
3 or four links of Italian sausage or Italian tofu sausage, cut into slices.
I prefer sweet, but try hot if you prefer.
1 can tomato paste
chopped garlic (fresh or in a bottle)
a little oil (olive is good)
parmesean cheese
some balsamic vinegar
spices - salt & pepper of course, the rest is up to you. I like to use
basil, oregano, maybe some thyme... but see what's fresh & you like. If you
like spicy food, get hot pepper - what's it to me?
optional: spinach, in case you want to throw that in instead of having a
side veg

Anyway, here's watchya do...

In a large frying pan, saute up a good amount of garlic in the oil, until
it's getting a little brown. The amount of garlic is to taste, natch.

Toss in the sausage slices. Forgot to slice 'em? Do it in your hands over
the pan. Just don't cut your fingers.

Let the slices cook a little bit & turn them so they get a tiny bit brown on
either side. While this is happening, you can start your water for the
pasta a-boilin'.

When the sausage is a little done, spoon in the tomato paste. Yes, it's
thick. Rub it around with the garlic and oil on the bottom of the pan - add
more oil if you like.

How's that water going? Ready? Toss in your pasta. If you like, you can
put a steamer on top of the pasta pot to steam your spinach at the same
time. Crafty, eh? If you prefer to saute the spinach alone, just be
prepared to put it in the sauce a bit earlier. If you have thawed, drained,
frozen spinach, it can go in towards the end just to warm up. If you have
canned spinach, throw it away.

OK, back to the sausage and sauce. Add some balsamic vinegar and your
spices to thin it a little and give it a nice taste. Also add your
parmesean to taste - this will thicken it and make it more salty, countering
the balsamic. Don't be afraid to add a little more oil if it needs it, too.
What you're looking to do is make a sort of thick glaze that caramelizes a
bit and coats the sausage, but leaves a bit as a sauce. It's not supposed
to be liquid-y like regular spaghetti sauce.

Your pasta and spinach should be done by now. Drain the pasta and plop both
it and the spinach in the pan of sausage and sauce. Now mix it all together
well, so the sauce kind of coats the pasta as well as the sausage.

Serve with extra parmesean for sprinklin' on the side. Finis!

If you get your pasta, spinach and sausage all going at the same time and
timed correctly, this gets done in maybe 20 minutes. It's hard to mess up
too much, because even if the paste starts to overcook a bit, it just gets
more caramelized, and you can re-thin it with vinegar, oil or water. It also
happens to be ridiculously tasty for the small amount of work involved.

Totally yummy. I happened to add some sugar to cut some of the acid and I am not the healthy type and therefore will be using another sausage or two because that's the best part, dammit.

Happy Friday, all.