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Red peppers

Italian Potato-Sausage Soup

March 11, 2018 By Caroline 5 Comments

A hearty meal with a healthy dose of veggies, this Italian Potato-Sausage Soup is one of the first recipes I ever made. I remember the first time I tried it, I confused a clove of garlic with a head of garlic, so I used 2 whole heads of garlic by mistake! The result, while rather pungent, actually wasn’t half bad 🙂 I learned my lesson for next time and it’s been a favourite dish for over twenty years now! The sausages give the broth a wonderful spicy flavour complimented by the fresh red peppers. Topped with shaved Parmesan cheese and some chives, it comes together quickly for a delicious lunch or dinner.

Italian Potato Sausage Soup with Red Peppers

The original recipe came from a book I had picked up, 30-minute Meals from the Academy. An oldie but a goodie, this book has lots of simple recipes that are easy to pull together and taste great. The book put an emphasis on the mise-en-place method of prepping and cutting all of your ingredients before beginning to cook anything. This was an important lesson to learn when I first starting out—I still remember frantically trying to keep up with prepping ingredients while cooking because I hadn’t thought through how long the prep work would take (and being a newbie in the kitchen, I wasn’t exactly sous chef material!) True to the book, I still prep and chop everything for this recipe before getting started on the stove.

Mise en place - prep all your veggies in advance

It’s worth noting that the quality of sausages you buy will greatly affect the final dish. Rather than the basic grocery store sausages that can be very fatty and overly salted, I go to a good quality butcher offering house made, smaller-batch sausages instead. I find they tend to be much leaner and the spices and overall flavour is so much better. They freeze well, so you can always buy enough for several recipes to avoid too many special trips to the meat shop. I adapted the recipe to include the extra step of removing the sausage casings. It only takes a couple of extra minutes and makes the sausage pieces more meatball like. I also found that while the larger piece sizes recommended for the veggies look quite gourmet, they are hard to manage and not very user-friendly while eating. Instead I go with bite-size pieces that fit easily into a spoon—no extra cutting/wrangling required while eating!

Remove italian sausage casings and cut into meatballs

The sausages start off steaming in a small amount of water, then the water is drained and they are browned on all sides. Once brown, the sausages are removed from the pot and set aside. Olive oil is added, and the veggies are sautĂ©ed. I start with the onion, followed by garlic, seasoning and potatoes. I add the red peppers near the end as I like them to remain just a tiny bit crisp. Once the veggies are just slightly golden in places, it’s time to add the broth and tomato paste. The reserved sausages go back in, too.

Saute Garlic, Onions and Vegetables

At this point you just need to cook everything for about 15 minutes or so, until the potatoes are soft and cooked through. Do a taste check for salt and pepper, adding more if needed. A nice crusty baguette with butter on the side round this out for a tasty dinner or hearty lunch.

Add broth and tomato paste and cook soup

To serve, ladle into bowls and top with shaved parmesan pieces and some chives or green onions. Twenty years later, I still make this regularly and it’s a real crowd pleaser. This recipe is a keeper and I hope to make it for another twenty years.

Italian Potato Sausage Soup Topped with Parmesan Cheese

Hearty and delicious, a tomato broth with lot of fresh vegetables and sausage
5 from 1 vote
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Italian Potato Sausage Soup

A hearty soup loaded with bright red peppers, garlic, potatoes and sausage that is quick and easy to make.

Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Servings 5 people

Ingredients

  • 3 Italian Sausages
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 small red onion, quartered and sliced
  • 550 g baby potatoes, thinly sliced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp Italian Seasoning
  • 2 red peppers, cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 156 ml tomato paste (5.5 oz)
  • 900 ml chicken broth (30 oz or 4 cups)
  • salt to taste
  • freshly ground pepper to taste
  • handful of chives, diced
  • Parmesan cheese, shaved

Instructions

  1. Trim, chop and prep all ingredients. Remove casings from sausages and cut into 1" pieces, forming little sausage meatballs.

  2. In a large covered pot over medium-high heat, simmer sausages in 1/4 cup water for four minutes. Drain water, increase heat, and brown sausages on all sides (for about five minutes). Remove sausages and set aside.

  3. Heat olive oil in pot. Add onions and sauté for four minutes. Add garlic, potatoes, Italian seasoning and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for another five minutes. Add red peppers and cook for two minutes.

  4. Add tomato paste, broth and reserved sausages. Bring to a boil and simmer for fifteen minutes, until potatoes are softened and cooked through. Test for seasoning and add more salt if needed.

  5. To serve, ladle into bowls and top with shaved Parmesan, freshly ground pepper and diced chives.

Zesty tomato broth with red peppers, potatoes and sausages

Filed Under: Main, Recipe Tagged With: Garlic, Italian, Parmesan Cheese, potato, Red peppers, Sausage, soup, Tomato

Roasted Chicken & Veg Penne

July 19, 2017 By Caroline 2 Comments

vegetables, pasta and chicken are prepped

Roasted vegetables, balsamic chicken and penne make for a great pasta salad you can enjoy hot or cold. A favorite I make often over the summer, it makes four generous lunch servings that taste great cold the next day. Or, if you’re looking for a quick weeknight dinner, grill and enjoy immediately.

Refillable cooking mist spray bottle with olive oil

A big timesaver when it comes to grilling is using an olive oil spray bottle—I prefer to buy the bottle and fill it with my own olive oil so I know exactly what’s in there. I fill it up with just a regular olive oil (saving the extra-virgin for drizzling or making dressings where you can savour the difference). The bottle I have has a pump in the lid so you can remove the air, allowing it to spray into a fine mist perfect for lightly coating the vegetables in this recipe.

Mustard dressing mixed in a bowl

I used to toss this pasta salad with a pesto, and that works out ok, but I’ve come to prefer this grainy mustard dressing. It coats the pasta and lightly dresses the vegetables without overpowering the dish.

Roasted vegetables ready to be chopped up

I have a love-hate relationship with roasted red peppers. It took me years to figure out how to roast them to get the skins off. Unless you really, really blacken the skins like the pepper lid top right, it’s pretty tough to remove the skins. So, depending on my mood (and whether I forgot about the peppers and left them on the grill too long!), I either just under-roast the peppers a bit and leave the skins on (remove them before they get papery), or really blister them for deeper roasted peppers where the skins come off. Or sort of go half-and-half, like the peppers shown above, removing the blackened bits that come off easily.

Chicken on the grill

Marinating the chicken briefly in balsamic vinegar and olive oil gives a great flavour and depth of colour when grilled. I separate the tenders and slice the chicken breasts to flatten them, so that the thickness is more even. that way they cook through quickly and won’t dry out. You’ll want to pull the tenders off earlier as they will cook more quickly than the larger pieces.

Penne with balsamic chicken and roasted zucchini and red peppers with feta

The final plated pasta topped with fresh ground pepper and some crumbled feta. You can always mix it up with this recipe: try it with mushrooms, goat cheese, asparagus or toss in some spinach while the pasta is hot to wilt it.

Four lunch containers with pasta and veg ready to go

Lunch feasts packed up and ready to go. A great and healthy way to fuel your week at work.

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Roasted Chicken & Veg Penne

Pasta, peppers, zucchini and mustard dressing come together for a quick and healthy meal.

Course Lunch, Main Course
Cuisine American
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Servings 4

Ingredients

Pasta

  • 3 cups whole wheat penne
  • 2 chicken breasts, boneless, skinless
  • 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1/3 cup olive oil + additional for veggies
  • salt
  • freshly ground pepper
  • 2 red peppers tops cut off, seeds & ribs removed
  • 2 zucchini sliced in half lengthwise
  • 3 green onions
  • 100 g crumbled feta cheese (about 1/2 cup)

Grainy Mustard Dressing

  • 1 1/2 tbsp grainy mustard (medium hot)
  • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • salt
  • pepper, freshly ground

Instructions

  1. Combine olive oil and balsamic vinegar in a dish large enough for the chicken. Prep chicken breasts: remove the tenders, and slice into the thickest part of the breast, opening it up like a book. Set chicken breasts and tenders into the prepared dish and marinate for 15–30 minutes.

  2. Heat grill to 400°. Prep vegetables: spray lightly with olive oil and season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. 

  3. In a small bowl, combine the grainy mustard dressing ingredients.

  4. Cook penne according to directions, drain and place into your final serving bowl. Add a few tbsp of the dressing to keep it from sticking while you prep the remaining ingredients.

  5. Grill vegetables to desired tenderness. If you're in a hurry, grill the red peppers lightly so you can leave the skins on and simple dice and serve. If you have a bit more time and prefer to roast them fully, blister the skin so that you can more easily remove it before chopping and adding to the pasta. When the vegetables are cooked, chop them up and add them to the pasta. (Discard the green onion ends, and just adding the chopped roasted bulbs)

  6. Lightly oil the grill; place the balsamic chicken breasts and tenders onto the hot grill. After 2 minutes, reduce heat to 350°. The tenders will cook more quickly, check them after about 8 minutes and remove when cooked through. Continue cooking the breasts an additional 5–6 minutes until cooked. Remove to a cutting board and chop, adding to the pasta bowl.

  7. Add remaining dressing to the pasta bowl, season with additional salt and freshly ground pepper to taste if needed. Divide among serving plates, and top with crumbled feta.

Filed Under: Main, Pleb Feasts, Recipe Tagged With: balsamic chicken, chicken breast, grainy mustard, Grill, grilled red peppers, grilled zucchini, olive oil spray, penne, Red peppers, roasted red peppers, Veg, Vegetables, zucchini

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Welcome to my kitchen journal, a place where I will share my favourite heritage recipes honed over the years, as well as document new evolutions and experiments along the way. Great feasts become vehicles for fond memories—the best meals are the ones someone made with love, for you. Follow me to explore traditions, document stories and experience the joy of the feast. Read More…

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