One Pot Chicken & Sausage Cajun Pasta

I recently started following Buzzfeed’s Tasty page on Facebook.  They post tutorial videos every day of simple recipes summarized in about a minute or less.

I tried out my first one of their recipes and it was a huge success!  And it was incredibly simple – you just throw a bunch of ingredients in one big pot until it all cooks down into creamy delicious Cajun goodness.

This would be a great recipe when having guests over for dinner since it’s hassle free and makes enough to feed a crowd.  Next time I might do a bit less pasta & add more veggies, but we were very impressed with how this turned out.

One Pot Chicken & Sausage Cajun Pasta (adapted from Tasty)

Ingredients:

• 2 T olive oil
• 2 diced chicken breasts
• 8 oz. Andouille sausage, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• ½ yellow onion, sliced
• 1 red pepper, sliced
• 1 green pepper, sliced
• 2 cups mushrooms, sliced
• 16 oz pasta
• 5 cups chicken broth
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 1 cup shredded Parmesan
• 1 T Cajun seasoning (or equal parts cayenne pepper, onion powder, paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper)

Directions:

1. Pour olive oil into the pot. Add diced chicken breast to the pot, cover with Cajun seasoning, and stir until the chicken is evenly seasoned. Then, add sliced sausage and stir. Cook the meat on medium heat for 5-10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

2. Once the meat is cooked, add in the garlic, onion, peppers, and mushrooms, and stir. Continue stirring for 3-5 minutes as the veggies cook down.

3. Add the dry pasta to the pot (if using long, thin noodles, break in half), then pour in the chicken broth. Stir until everything is well-mixed. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, keep covered bring the heat down to a simmer for 10 minutes (stirring every two minutes). If there still extra chicken broth, you can discard it, cook longer until the liquid evaporates, or add a little cornstarch to thicken the liquid.

4. Lastly, add heavy cream and parmesan and stir until your pasta is well blended. Garnish with green onions, more parmesan, a sprinkle of Cajun seasoning (if you want some extra spice), and salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

Cask & Larder – Winter Park, FL

On our way home from Mount Dora (see this post), we stopped for dinner in Winter Park.  It is one of my favorite cities – I love the hometown feel and they have such a great range of restaurants to pick from!  Last time we were there, we ate at The Ravenous Pig, which was awesome! 

This time, we decided to try Cask & Larder Southern Public House, which is owned by the same chefs that run The Ravenous Pig – James and Julie Petrakis.  Both restaurants focus on seasonal ingredients and have constantly changing menus.  I really love places that update their menus regularly because it’s a different experience every time you dine, and that way they can use the freshest ingredients.  

We were a little early for dinner, so we walked around Swine & Sons Provisions next door first – which just opened a few months ago.  It is a market that features many of the concepts from Cask & Larder and The Ravenous Pig, but more casual.  They products like their homemade IPA mustard and you can purchase sandwiches or have charcuterie to-go.  We really want to try their food next time we’re in the area – I’m sure it’s just as great as their sister restaurants.  

When we walked into Cask & Larder for dinner, they were just about to start their happy hour specials.  We grabbed a seat in a window nook near the bar since the main dining room wasn’t quite open yet and browsed the menu.  The graphic design is really fantastic – Hatchet Design did all the branding for the restaurant, and you can see it carried throughout their daily-printed menus and signage throughout.    

While waiting for the kitchen to open, I sipped on a Bee’s Knees cocktail & Lance enjoyed an IPA.  They brew their beers in-house, so we also got a flight with the meal. 

We took advantage of their Happy Hour and ordered a few appetizers – the Sewansecott Oysters with mignonette sauce and Fried Chicken Sausage on a Hawaiian sweet roll with honey and watermelon.  I think I still prefer the oysters at The Oyster Bar, but they were good for only $1! The sausage was a really interesting fresh combination of flavors. 

After that we split a salad with fresh beets, figs, toasted almonds and a mix of greens along with their Country Ham platter – with Benton’s, Newsom’s, and Father’s smoked & cured hams, ale mustard, pepper jelly, and biscuits.  This is probably one of the best salads I’ve had at a restaurant – you could tell they used ingredients at the peak of their season.  The ham platter was really tasty as well and each had a different flavor (from sweet to smoky).  

We finished off the meal with their house-made almond waffle cone, malted bourbon semifreddo, and spiced caramel corn.  Again, it reminded us of our favorite popcorn sundae dessert at Canoe in Atlanta.  Still nothing beats Canoe, but this was close. 

I’m hoping that the owners of Cask & Larder decide to expand their company to Tampa, because I’d eat at their restaurants every week if they were closer to us!

Swine & Sons Provisions is located at 595 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789 and is open 9am – 4pm Monday – Tuesday and Thursday – Friday, and 7am – 5pm Monday – Friday, 10am – 6pm Saturday, and 11am – 4pm on Sunday.    

Cask & Larder is located right next door at 565 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789 and is open 4pm – 10pm Monday – Saturday and 10:30am – 9:30pm on Sunday. 

The Ravenous Pig is located at 1234 N Orange Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789 and is open 4:30pm – 9:30pm on Mondays, 11:30am – 2:30pm and 4:30 – 9:30pm Tuesdays – Thursdays, 11:30am – 2:30pm and 4:30pm – 10:30pm on Fridays – Saturdays and closed on Sundays.  

Picnic at Honeymoon Island & Barley Mow Brewing

 

Lance’s sister & brother in law, Brandi & Jeremy, got us an awesome grill for Christmas, and we’ve been so busy we haven’t had the chance to use it until we brought it to Honeymoon Island the other day!  Before, we only had our little George Foreman, but this one is great because it’s compact enough for our small porch and it’s portable.

Last time we went to Honeymoon Island was back in 2011 – we had only been dating a month, and we took the ferry from there to Caladesi Island.  That was in the summer, so it was beautiful weather, but we didn’t plan for how cold it would be this time!  The highs were in the 50’s, but with the wind it felt more like the 40’s.  Luckily I brought a jacket, but it wasn’t really beach weather.  The ferry to Caladesi was closed due to the high wind. 

Originally we thought we’d set up by the water, but we moved to a picnic shelter to keep warm and make sure the grill stayed lit.    

 

Like most of our picnics, we made a run to Trader Joe’s first to pick up some food.  We bought their Spicy Italian Vino & Formaggio Chicken Sausages, baked beans, corn, peppers, and onions to grill.  We were going to just get some normal hot dog buns, but we saw that TJ’s had soft pretzel sticks, which was so much more exciting!  We topped the sausages with the veggies and Double Cream Gouda cheese (I also love the smoked gouda cheese at TJ’s!) 

We grilled the corn with Sriracha Kaffir Lime Rub from Williams Sonoma (a gift from my cousin Chris and his wife Marty). 

As an impulse buy, we bought some nuts to snack on – Thai Lime & Chili Cashews and Sesame Honey Almonds.  WOW they are both delicious.  The cashews at first bite didn’t seem all that spicy, but the chili hits you after a few seconds – make sure you have something to drink with these.  And the sesame almonds were really filling – they’d be a good snack to hold you over between meals. 

 

We had planned to grill pineapple as well, but we had way too much food already.  We walked it off on the Osprey Trail, which was a really nice little hike.  We saw an eagle in its nest – then another one joined carrying a fish!  There were also a bunch of armadillos along the trail. 

 

 

Lance’s niece, Lila, sent us a “Flat Stanley” a few weeks ago.  We had to bring him on adventures and document his experiences in a journal, then mail him back to her class in Pittsburgh so she could talk about his trip.  One of the pages asked what the landscape looked like in our area compared to Pennsylvania, so we brought him to the beach with us. 

 

Afterwards we checked another brewery off our map by visiting Barley Mow Brewing Company in Largo.  We kept hearing great things about their beer, and we weren’t disappointed.  The people were very friendly, and it was clear a lot of the patrons there were regulars. 

A photographer from Visit St. Pete Clearwater was there taking pictures of their Quackalope IPA, so Lance got a free beer for letting them take shots of him drinking one (I don’t think they’re online yet, but I did find a really great video they posted last month about the Craft Beer Trail!)

I especially liked the Son of a Seabiscuit – which is a sweet amber beer brewed with Serrano peppers.  I probably couldn’t drink more than one, but the small taste in the flight was the perfect way to warm up from the chilly weather. 

 

 

Honeymoon Island is located at 1 Causeway Blvd, Dunedin, FL 34698.

Barley Mow is located at 518 W Bay Dr, Largo, FL 33770 and is open 3pm – 2am Monday – Friday and 12pm – 2am Saturday – Sunday. 

Sausage & Watercress Quiche

After being out of town so much during the holidays and lots of eating out, we had to a lot of veggies leftover in our fridge to use up.  I threw them all together in a quiche, and it was actually the best I’ve ever made! I didn’t really take exact measurements, but I’ll do my best to outline the recipe below.  

I bought some watercress after reading this article about it being the most nutritious superfoods! Who knew?  I always just thought it was a garnish.  But this website says that “gram for gram, watercress can boast more vitamin C than oranges, more vitamin E than broccoli, more calcium than whole milk, and more iron than spinach!”  It tastes very peppery, so it’s a lot more flavorful than most other leafy greens. So it went perfectly in our quiche! 

You could probably cut the amount of sausage in half (it would certainly make it healthier), but we threw the whole thing it to make it extra meaty.  And you can use whatever combination of veggies you like best! 

Sausage & Watercress Quiche

Ingredients:

·        1 premixed pie crust (I used Pillsbury)

·        5 eggs

·        ½ cup milk

·        1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

·        16 ounces sausage

·        1 cup watercress, chopped

·        ¼ onion, diced

·        ½ cup tomato, diced

·        1 sprig thyme

·        1 tsp red pepper

·        1 clove garlic, minced

·        Salt and pepper, to taste

 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Roll your pie crust out on a 9” round pie pan and bake for 8 minutes.

2. While that bakes, cut your sausage into pieces and pre-cook on a skillet until browned.  Drain the excess fat from the skillet.

3. Take pie crust out of the oven & pour in broken up sausage.  Top with remaining veggies and cheese. 

4. In a bowl, whisk together eggs and milk.  Add in red pepper, salt, and pepper. Pour over the meat and vegetables. 

5. Bake for an additional 30 – 40 minutes, or until eggs are fully cooked through and crust turns a golden-brown.