Butterflied roast chicken over sausage stuffing

Looking for inspiration for dinner at Pender Harbour, Connie and I went to The Oak Tree Market our go to place for meat when we at Maderia Park.  They usually have a good choice of very good quality meats and home made sausage. This day it was a free range chicken that called out along with some Tuscany turkey sausage.

Roast chicken is one of the ulitmate comfort foods for me with crisp slightly salty skin and a flavourful stuffing.  I have taken to butterflying chicken to roast a fair bit recently. It makes it cook quicker and by opening it out and placing on top of a stuffing of some kind it means that all the cooking juices soak in to whatever it is topping.

Stuffing

4 slices of bread cubed

1/2 red onion chopped

sprig of fresh sage 

3 sticks of celery chopped 

1lb of good sausage meat.

Combine all the stuffing ingredients in a bowl.

Mix thoroughly, the hands are really best for this and place in to a roasting tin, piling it up so that it is about the same size as the chicken that is to be placed on top.

Open up the chicken and place on top.  smear with a little olive oil and a good sprinkle of salt.  Then tuck some fresh rosemary in and around the chicken.

Easy home made cranberry pork Italian sausage

I have always thought to myself when presented with a new situation, or skill to perform "I can do that, how hard can it be?" When I was 16, and working on the weekends in a store selling sewing supplies, a customer came in and asked if I could recommend a seamstress to sew a dress with the supplies that she had bought.  "I can do that for you" I said. Now I had never made any clothes before, but she took me at my word and using the pattern, (and I expect help from my Mother who was a very god seamstress) I delivered the made dress.  So when presented with the fact that I could not get to my favourite sausage store to buy sausages for New Years I thought "how hard can making sausages be?"

Well in fact a lot easier than making a dress for the first time.  I do not have a sausage stuffing machine, but I was making sausages to go inside a sausage roll, so I did not need to stuff them. I also do not have a meat grinder, so I bought ground pork instead of grinding it myself.

I did a little research on sausage ingredients and found that the ratio of salt to meat is important for a sausage, and the addition of fennel seed is important for an Italian sausage.

2lb ground pork
1teaspoons of salt
1 tablespoon of fennel seed.your blender to grind them up, or do it manually in a mortar and pestle.
11/2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1tablespoon of  finely minced fresh garlic
1/4 cup of dried cranberries (optional)
1tablespoon of black pepper
1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes

I ground my fennel seeds in a pestle and mortar, but you could also use a spice grinder.

Wonton wrapper appetizer

It was our annual Christmas caroling party on Saturday, so I spent Saturday morning looking for inspiration and ideas for new appetizer recipes.  There are some tried and true,items that I make over and over but it always good to try something new.  I found this recipe  for Wonton Wrapper Appetizers

I thought it looked good, easy and most of it can be made ahead just thrown in the oven for a few minutes before serving, these are all important criteria for appetizer recipes. I do not want to be a slave to the kitchen when everyone else is having fun, anyway the kitchen is always so full of people.

16 pieces


1/2 pound of sausage meat (I used Italian)
1/2 onion chopped or equivalent of green onion
16 won ton wrappers
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheese


In a frying pan, cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink; drain if necessary. Stir in onions, cook for a couple more minutes and set aside.

Lightly brush the won ton wrappers with olive oil and press them into miniature muffin cups.

Quick chicken and italian sausage dinner

I made this for dinner the other night because I needed dinner for two and had only one chicken breast.  Necessity being the mother of invention, I came up with this simple but actually delicious quick dish. This is not only a quick dish to make, but also a quick post as I do not have many pictures.

1 Teaspoon of olive oil
1 Chicken breast cut into bite size chunks
2 Italian sausages cut into bite size chunks
2 cups of roast tomato sauce (or any other tomato sauce you have on hand)
1/2 cup of panko breadcrumbs or enough to cover the top of the dish
1/2 cup of grated Parmesan

Crumpet club and sausage and mash

Two good friends and I decided after a bottle of wine or two a few weeks ago, that we would like to watch season 1 of Downton Abbey. And where better than at the Cottagers wife's cottage in Gibsons BC. We decided not only were we going to watch this critically acclaimed  English TV series, we were going to eat English food all weekend. Cottagers wife.  dubbed us the Crumpet Club, though in fact we did not have any crumpets, but maybe during season 2!

We decided, having found some good looking home made "English Bangers" at the local IGA that we would have bangers and mash for dinner on Friday

We considered Toad in the Hole (sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding), but I was warned that the stove might be a little uneven so bangers and mash it would have to be.  One of the most important parts of this dish is a good tasty gravy, as well as a decent sausage and of course creamy mashed potatoes loaded with butter.

Sausage and Gravy

4 sausages (only one each but we ate 4 meals that day)
1 onion sliced
2 cups of beef stock
1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a 1/4 cup of cold water.

Prick the sausages all over to stop them from bursting then put into a non stick frying pan and then turn on the heat so that the sausage will give up some of its fat as it warms up.  When the pan is heated up and the sausages are sizzling add the onion.

Quick and easy sausage supper

 I love Christmas and look forward to it every year, all the parties, the food, presents and family. Though I do love all these things, after the crescendo of Christmas day I crave some peace and Quiet.  So Nancy I ran away to Pender Harbour on the day after boxing day for two nights of rest and relaxation.  We cooked food left over in the fridge from the holidays played a lot of Quiddler and worked on some appetizers for New Years.

The weather was not perfect with little shots of sun bathing the local hills and islands for a few moments then moving on. But very conducive to rest and relaxation.  We arrived up there at about 6:00 and we were hungry, so after a very quick reconnoiter of what we had available we came up with this dish which will I believe go down as another Pender Harbour classic like Sunday night sausage and potato dinner While Nancy was turning on the water turning up the heat I turned the oven on to 400 and pulled the ingredients out of the bags we had brought.

6 small nugget potatoes halved
4 mild itatlian sausage chopped (these were from Hopcott's )
1/2 white onion chopped in to large chunks
6 whole mini sweet peppers (also from Hopcott's)
2 carrots sliced fairly thickly
1 clove of garlic sliced
4 tablespoons of olive oil.
A handful of fresh herbs we used parsley as that is what we had.

Throw all these ingredients into a roasting tin toss in the olive oil and salt and pepper.

Put this in the oven, for about 1/2 an hour to 3/4 depending on the size of your potatoes. This is just enough time to enjoy a glass of wine and a game of quiddler.

Italian sausage white bean soup

The other soup that I made for the carolling party this year was using Italian sausages and white beans.  These two things go very well together I have always thought and I had some home made beef stock in my freezer and this was a good way to use it. I also added Kale as the dark green flavour of the kale really complements the slightly sweet spiciness of the Italian sausage.

I made a very large amount of soup that would have fed 30 people a mug of soup so unless you are expecting a crowd you might want to scale it back.

12 hot Italian sausages cut up
2 onions chopped
2 very large cloves or garlic sliced or 4 smaller ones
6 cups of beef stock
2 cans of tomato puree
1 lb of dried white navy beans soaked in water for an hour.
2 bunches of kale chopped

Roast chicken with white beans and sausage.

It is mid September and last weekend it felt like it, though the sun was shining sometimes there was a chill in the air and so we felt like something comforting to eat. Nancy had bought at hopcott's chicken so since this was a free range organic chicken I wanted to cook it simply and let the flavour of the chicken come out, and at the end of the day roast chicken is one of the best meals.

To roast the chicken, all I did was truss it and sprinkle very liberally with salt.

Ready for the oven

I placed it on a rack and cooked in a 400 oven for about an hour until the skin was crispy and no pink juices came out of the chicken.

Daring cooks -gumbo

Our May hostess, Denise, of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need, from creole spices, homemade stock, and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh. I even have a copy of this book myself as my husband bought it for me after our visit to New Orleans last year. So I used the recipe out of the book.

Of course I did not follow the recipe completely not only because I am incapable of doing that, but because I could not find all the ingredients.  Okra was no where to be found, but I am not sure I really tried as do not like the slimy texture of okra that much and it was fine with out.  Also file powder does not appear to be readily available, I am sure if I had tried harder I would have found it, but I did not start to look until the afternoon I was cooking it.

Sunday night sausage and potato dinner

Nancy and I invented this recipe several years ago on a Sunday night at Pender Harbour.  At the last minute we had decided to not go back to reality, but to stay one more night in paradise.  We checked out the fridge and there was really nothing to work with, so we headed into the village and the IGA had closed. So we went over to Oak Tree market to my favourite butcher.  They had some wonderful home made chirozo sausages and really nice local new potatoes.

So this weekend on Sunday night Nancy and I were hankering after some potatoes and sausages.