Pasta Redemption

Good morning, Crushers!

The pasta debacle of the past few days has been resolved. We made the recipe last night and it was delicious! I'm so glad I found this recipe and tried it. There are a few modifications that I made because of personal preference and ingredients that I chose to use. It probably has 10x the calories that you actually need, but if you stick to the portion size, it's not so bad. I had to stick to the serving size because I'm only allowed so many carbs, but that works to my advantage!

Here is the original recipe for Sweet and Creamy Bacon and Sausage Linguine. And here's what I did:
Ingredients:
1 box of pasta (I used spaghetti since it was on sale instead of linguine)
1 pound of Italian turkey sausage, browned and crumbled
6 slices of bacon, chopped up into small-ish pieces (I could have made them even been smaller)
1 1/2 cups chicken broth (low sodium)
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp honey
1/4-ish tsp Penzey's Berbere seasoning (you do not need much at all!)
Black pepper to taste
1/2 lemon, juice and zest
1 1/2 - 2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 bag of spinach, washed and dried
3-4 Roma tomatoes, diced
As much Reggano Parmesan cheese as you want 

Directions:


Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Prepare pasta according to package instructions. Make sure you don't let the pasta cook too long or it gets gross. Plus, you're going to be adding sauce, so watch out!

In a large pan (hello favorite Calphalon pan!), brown sausage and bacon. Remove sausage and bacon, leave drippings in pan. NOTE: I was worried about this step since you're going to be adding butter and heavy cream later. Instead, I think I'd either keep the drippings or the butter, but not do both next time. By the time this was done, so was my pasta. I just drained the pasta and moved the sausage and bacon into the pot with the noodles and stirred them so they wouldn't stick together. Why make another pan dirty?!

The pasta and meat is waiting for the delicious sauce!

Stir in chicken broth, butter (see note above) and honey. Season to taste with Berbere and pepper. I left out the salt since that seemed like overkill. Continue cooking until chicken stock is reduced by half. I'm always amazed at how quickly that reduces!

Stir in lemon juice and zest. Stir in heavy cream and simmer until it coats the back of a spoon. Honestly, I probably did not wait long enough before adding the spinach, but I was getting really hungry. Plus, I was using a cool silicone coated spoon, so nothing sticks to that thing! Add baby spinach and stir until wilted. This doesn't take very long.

And here's the healthiest ingredient becoming not as healthy...

I waited until the last minute to stir in the diced tomatoes because I left the seeds in and didn't want them to get too mushy. They look prettier when they're not all mushed up.

Ready to be eaten!

Pour the sauce mixture over the bacon, sausage and linguine and stir until thick and sticks to noodles. Again, I probably did not wait long enough, but I was hungry. What can I say? Plate it up and top with as much Parmesan cheese as you'd like.

Source

This will DEFINITELY be made again at our house. I loved it and so did Steve. I thought we'd end up arguing over who was going to take the leftovers to work for lunch, but fortunately it made enough for lots of leftovers! This would be a great dish to serve at a party since you could probably make the sauce without the drippings and use veggie broth in case you have vegetarian guests. It would be so good!

Peel-a-head: I will get to make myself a whole pan of these strawberry shortcake bars. I can't wait!