Recently, my bookclub had a meeting at the home of one of our members who hasn’t been able to get around very well of late and has missed several gatherings.  We all pitched in to bring the meeting to her, pot-luck style, and I was to bring an entree with me.  Well, this is a luncheon gathering and everything else sort of developed an Italian-ish theme, so I decided to keep things in the Mediterranean realm and made a zucchini ratatouille with sweet Italian sausage and cannelini beans (also known as white kidney beans).  Sausage was courtesy of Jamie Stachowski (I used the sweet pork Italian sausage, but he also makes a spicy one, and an Italian chicken sausage).  I get all my sausages from him, and you’ll see lots of recipes over time on this blog that use his great links.  When you make this recipe, it will fill up a typical lasagne pan.  I’m proud to say that this and the fruit salad were the only items people picked when they went back for seconds.

To make it, I pulled out my biggest saute pan and threw in a chopped up a large yellow onion and sauteed it in olive oil and a pinch of salt until soft and starting to take on a little color, and then I added 12 ounces of the sausage removed from the casings (about 3 to 4 links, if you aren’t using Stachowski’s), crumbled, and cooked that until mostly done.  To that I added 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced, 5-6 small zucchini (about 6 inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter), split length-wise and chopped in to half-rounds about 1/4 inch thick, a pint of cherry tomatoes cut in halves, and 2 cans of cannelini beans, drained and rinsed, and a few shakes of dried oregano (I figure about 1.5 teaspoons).  Cook that all together until the zucchini starts to soften and then taste to see if it needs salt — with all that zucchini, it probably does.  Stir and taste again.  Once you have the salt level where you like it, put it in the lasagne pan, sprinkle the top with grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese (not too thick, you just want a little tang, not a layer of goo) and put it in a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes.  Stick a sheet pan underneath in case it bubbles over.  Serves 6-8, depending on appetites.

 

I knew that in the fridge I had some leftover roasted chicken thighs that needed something to happen to them, and so on the way home from work and creeping along in awful traffic, I decided to experiment with a new twist on chicken salad. I toasted maybe 3 tablespoons of slivered almonds and let them cool while I was chopping stuff up. I took an avocado and mashed it up with the juice and zest from a lime, added a generous pinch of salt and a few grinds of fresh black pepper. To that, I added half a small sweet onion in a fine dice, 4 ribs of celery in small dice, and the meat from 6 medium chicken thighs that I roasted a few days before, so about 3 loose cups of torn/chunked chicken meat. I stirred that all up until it was well mixed and it seemed a bit dry and needed more tang, so I stirred in a few tablespoons of Marzetti’s cole slaw dressing. That did the trick. Then at the very last step, I dumped in a cup of fresh blueberries and the now-cooled toasted almonds and gave it a last good mix-up, taking care to not crush the blueberries. Served it with a slice of challah and was (as the Brits would say) quite chuffed at my concoction.