Saturday, April 12, 2008

Sausages on the grill

Tonight's Menu

  • grilled sausages & onions
  • "pizza" pasta salad
  • green salad "bar"
Gorgeous weather today. I grilled. Big surprise, eh?

I had some nice, fresh (non-cured/dried) sweet Italian sausages which I simmered in a big pot of water for about 15-20 minutes, then slapped on the grill to crisp and brown the skins. SO easy. Then I just cut a sweet onion (Texas 1015, in this case) into wedges, tossed them with a bit of EVOO, and grilled them on a grill screen for a few minutes until they'd softened and picked up a bit of color. I don't know why, but I HAVE to have onions with my sausage. I just do. It's some kind of law.

The pasta salad was something different for us, because I just never make it. In our family, pasta and salad are pretty much two completely different dishes, you know? But I got a wild hair and decided to make something with Italian-ish flavors that the kids might like. It was really easy to do, too!

All I did was cook and drain some pasta (wagon wheels -- it's what I had), then rinse it in cold water to chill it down. That went into a bowl along with cubes of mozzarella (not FRESH mozzarella -- the kind you can shred for pizza), slices of pepperoni, some sun-dried tomatoes (not the kind in oil, though you could use those if you wanted), and a bunch of shredded parmesan cheese (NOT the powdery stuff in the green can). I poured a little bottled Italian dressing on top, tossed it all together, and stuck it in the fridge until dinner was ready. It was really tasty! From a visual standpoint, it really needed something green, though. If I made this again I might add a little flat-leaf parsley, fresh basil, or a chopped green pepper.

Green salad bar was the same as on Tuesday.

4 comments:

Sarah said...

Badge, I have a feeling I've read this somewhere in this blog but, why do you put quotes around salad "bar"?

If vodka's involved, I'm there.

Badger said...

Because flat-out calling it a salad bar seems overly ambitious considering it's just a bowl of lettuce with a few bowls of other stuff alongside.

And also because I am overly fond of quotes. Please picture me doing finger quotes in the air every time you read them on my blog(s). Because I REALLY DO TALK LIKE THAT.

Sarah said...

Thanks for the info. Honestly, my life is so bereft of - of - oh, whatever, I'll find myself wondering about this while folding laundry.

Sylvia said...

Why do you boil the sausages rather than just grill them for 30 min?

Just curious :)