{Sierra Nevada Brewery}

It’s no secret–I love Sierra Nevada beer. There’s almost always a case of their Pale Ale in our house at all times, along with a few of their seasonal varieties tucked away in the fridge. Luckily for me, my brother lives in Chico, birthplace of Sierra Nevada and home to their brewery and taproom, so I try to make an excuse to visit whenever I get the chance (of course, visiting my brother is the real reason!).

Since I was in the area at Christmas, I decided to drag my family up there for a little afternoon brewery visit. Sierra Nevada’s taproom and restaurant has some of the best pub food I’ve ever had and this past visit was no exception. The menu features beer-inspired dishes with local ingredients.

Here are some photos of the meal:

Goat Cheese and Beet Salad

Mushroom, Garlic, and Pecan Pizza

French Dip

Roast Beef and Potato Pizza

Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup

Plus, they always have 15 beers or so on tap to try in tasters, half pints, or pints, many of which you can only find in the brewery. Growler, anyone?

You can check out more about Sierra Nevada on their website here.

{A Meal to Kick Off A New Year Part III}

Okay, now that we have the main dishes (pasta + sausage) ready to go, it’s time to complete the meal with some homemade pasta sauce and french bread. Because, well, we just like to torture ourselves in the kitchen some days! Both of these recipes are really quite easy to make though they do take a bit of preparation and cooking time–I would make fresh bread every day if I ever remembered to make the dough in the morning!

Let’s start with the sauce first. This was the only dish that we didn’t use the Kitchen Aid for (well, unless you count the sausage), but we did use our immersion blender. Apparently we’re a tad bit obsessed with our fancy kitchen tools. If you’re not quite as overstocked on kitchen gadgets as our kitchen, you can just use your regular ol’ blender. It will work just fine.

To start the sauce, we’re going to roast some veggies, so you’re going to need 5 small roma tomatoes, 1 bell pepper, and a little olive oil. Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and place veggies in a baking dish or casserole pan (you’ll want all of the yummy juices that leak out to add in later). Drizzle a little olive oil on top (about 1 tablespoon) and roast for about 10 minutes. Then, using a pair of tongs, carefully turn each of the tomatoes and the bell pepper over and roast for another 10 minutes. You’ll want the skin to be nice and blistered by the time they’re done.

Take the roasted veggies out of the oven. Peel the skins off of each tomato and off of the bell pepper–I used the tongs for this part too since the skin was so hot! When the skin is removed, place the veggies (and their extra juice drippings!) and 1/4 cup of water in a pot and blend. Alternatively, place in the blender and then transfer to a pot.

Add 1 small onion (chopped), 2 cloves garlic, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, 1 tablespoon fresh chopped oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon peppercorns.

Stir to mix and then blend together either with your immersion blender or in that good ol’ regular blender.

When the sauce has cooked down, add 1 ounce of Parmesan cheese and 1 6oz can of tomato pasta. If you want a vegetarian pasta sauce, STOP here.

If not, or you’re being coerced into eating meat like me, you’re going to want to heat up a little olive oil in a large frying pan. When the pan is hot, add the amazingly delicious sausage you made earlier and cook until brown, breaking up into smaller pieces with a spatula.

Finally, add the sauce to the meat and you’re ready to go!

Wait! We have to make the bread first–although, in reality, if your sauce is done and you’re pasta is cooked, its probably a wee bit late to start the bread but let’s just pretend, shall we?

You’ll want to start the bread at least 5 hours ahead of the meal (see what I mean about pretending). Like I said before, it’s really so easy to make that you would think I would do it everyday. Although that might just be feeding fuel to the fire with my carb obsession!

All you need is a few cups of flour, a package of yeast, a little salt, water, and olive oil and you too can make fresh bread! Here’s the recipe.

French Bread Recipe:

Make 1 large loaf

Print recipe!

Ingredients:

1 package yeast

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vinegar

1.5 cups water

3.5 cups flour

Steps:

Sprinkle yeast over 100 degree water to rehydrate in a large mixing bowl (or your Kitchen Aid mixer bowl) and let sit for about 10 minutes.

Combine flour, salt, and vinegar in a separate bowl and mix thoroughly.

Slowly add flour mixture to yeast and combine with a mixer, stopping when the dough pulls away from the bowl.

Knead, either by hand or by mixer, about 10-15 minutes by hand or 5-10 minutes by mixer.

Form a ball with the dough and place in a clean bowl with a moist towel covering the bowl.

Let rise until doubled.

When dough is ready, punch down, form into a loaf, and then let rise for another 20 minutes.

Place on baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Pasta Sauce Recipe:

Print recipe!

Ingredients:

5 small roma tomatoes

1 red bell pepper

1/4 cup water

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons olive oil + more for drizzling

2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 teaspoon peppercorns, or to taste

1 oz parmesan cheese

1 6oz can tomato paste

Sausage (optional)

Steps:

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.

Place tomatoes and bell pepper in large casserole pan. Drizzle a little olive oil on top (about 1 tablespoon) and roast for about 10 minutes. Then, using a pair of tongs, carefully turn each of the tomatoes and the bell pepper over and roast for another 10 minutes. You’ll want the skin to be nice and blistered by the time they’re done.

Take the roasted veggies out of the oven. Peel the skins off of each tomato and off of the bell pepper–I used the tongs for this part too since the skin was so hot! When the skin is removed, place the veggies (and their extra juice drippings!) and 1/4 cup of water in a pot and blend. Alternatively, place in the blender and then transfer to a pot.

Add onion, garlic, olive oil, basil, oregano, salt, and peppercorns. Stir to mix and then blend together either with your immersion blender or transfer to a regular blender.

 When the sauce has cooked down, add 1 ounce of parmesan cheese and 1 6oz can of tomato pasta. If you want a vegetarian pasta sauce, STOP here.If not, or you’re being coerced into eating meat like me, you’re going to want to heat up a little olive oil in a large frying pan. When the pan is hot, add sausage you made earlier and cook until brown, breaking up into smaller pieces with a spatula.Finally, add the sauce to the meat and you’re ready to go!

———

And voila, dinner is served! Now where did I put that glass of wine?

{A Meal to Kick Off A New Year Part II}

Hopefully you’ve had enough time to digest ;) yesterday’s pasta post because we’re moving onto part two today: the sausage.

I’m not going to lie, this part grossed me out a lot a little. To start with, I don’t eat much meat and I hadn’t eaten pork in over a year, but Jeff was so excited to try this that I gave in just this one time. Of course, I did had the leftovers for breakfast and lunch, but I didn’t want it to go to waste!

Back to being grossed out (just what you wanted, right?). This task is not for the faint of heart. The sausage oozes and pushes its way through the grinder all while making disgusting squishing noises. I couldn’t help but think of Sweeney Todd the entire time I watched, eyes glued, both horrified and fascinated, as I held the  bowl and Jeff pushed the meat through the grinder. Want to make this yet? Of course, it was some of the best sausage I’ve ever had, but I think I’ll have to let Jeff take the lead on this one from now on!

Ready for the steps? You can do it I promise–you just might have to cover your eyes and ears for a bit like I did!

First, you’ll need some pork shoulder. We bought a 3 pound package and ended up using about half of it for the sausage which was more than enough. You’ll also need 4 cloves of garlic, some salt, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, and peppercorns.

Cube the meat, and using the kitchen aid meat grinder attachment (or something similar), grind just the meat and garlic through first and set aside in a bowl.

Add salt, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, and peppercorns and combine thoroughly.

Grind the meat and spice mixture through a second time and place in a clean bowl. Cover, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

That’s it–homemade sausage! Now excuse me while I go pass out.

Pork Sausage Recipe

Makes about 3 cups ground sausage

Print recipe!

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds pork shoulder

1.5 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

4 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon peppercorns

Steps:

Cut pork shoulder into cubes.

Using the kitchen aid meat grinder attachment (or something similar), grind just the meat and garlic through first and set aside in a bowl.

Add salt, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, and peppercorns and combine thoroughly.

Grind the meat and spice mixture through a second time and place in a clean bowl. Cover, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Serve in desired format–case it, fry it, form into patties, you name it!

Note: Next, we combined the sausage meat with the tomato sauce, but you’ll just have to wait till tomorrow to get the rest!

PS–Next time we’re making chicken sausage!

{A Meal to Kick Off a New Year}

Last night, Jeff and I got a little ambitious. You see, we had gotten new Kitchen Aid meat grinder and pasta roller/cutter attachments for Christmas and in our excitement, we decided to make one epic meal: homemade pork sausage in a red sauce and fresh angel hair pasta. And to top it all off, fresh homemade french bread. I mean, why not right? Jeff got home about 4:30 and said he was already pretty hungry, so we decided to begin all of this at 5 with the thought of eating about 6 or so. And what time did we eat dinner? 8. It was one darn delicious meal, I must say, but lesson learned: when you’re making new things for the first time, maybe focus on learning how to make one new item instead of all new items.

That being said, if you’re up for it, I’d love to take you with me on the epic culinary adventure we had last night. It wasn’t perfect, and it was definitely messy (who needs more counter space?? Raising my hand for sure…), but the labor of love was totally worth it.

Let’s begin with the heart of the meal: the pasta. You may want a glass of wine for this (or maybe a few!) to help prepare you.

Ready? Okay, first things first, we used the Kitchen Aid dough hook, pasta roller, and angel hair pasta cutter attachments to assist with making the pasta. After making and kneading the dough (see recipe below), you have to roll it out through the attachment to get it to the right consistency before cutting. This seemed simple enough: place the dough through the roller on low a few times then gradually make it thinner. Except the dough kept folding on itself, causing us to start over from scratch a few times. It was really helpful to have two people during this step to help hold the stretched out dough, especially if you have a teensy kitchen like we do.

While you change the attachments, you need to set the dough on a really really well floured surface. Or, like us, you’ll have to scrap the first batch when all of the dough sticks to the counter…. When we had finally mastered the process (but hey, it was the first time after all!), it was time to cut the dough. Our dough must have still been a bit too thick because it didn’t quite cut through the pasta completely, but it was good enough to throw in the boiling water. And at this point, a lump of pasta would have been fine!

Since the pasta is so fresh, it only needs to cook for about 2-3 minutes. Then, just strain like you would normally and serve.

Easy, right? Ha. Despite being a bit lumpy and labor intensive, the pasta noodles were freaking amazing. The flavor wasn’t that much different from regular pasta, but the softness and freshness of the noodles was just unparalleled. Practice makes perfect, right?

Basic Egg Pasta Recipe

Makes 1 1/4 lbs dough

Recipe from Kitchen Aid

Print recipe!

Ingredients:

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon water

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Steps:

Place eggs, water, flour, and salt in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater. Turn to speed 2 and mix 30 seconds.

Exchange flat beater for dough hook. Turn to speed 2 and knead for 2 minutes. Remove dough from bowl and hand knead for 1 to 2 minutes. Let dough rest for 20 minutes. Divide dough into 4 pieces before processing with Pasta Sheet attachment.

Set adjustment knob on pasta sheet rollet at 1. Turn mixer speed to 2 and feed flattened piece of dough into rollers to knead. Fold dough in half and repeat. Repeat process several times, until dough is smooth and pliable and covers the width of the roller.

Change feed setting to 3 and feed dough through rollers again. Continue to increase roller setting until desired dough thickness is reached.

Exchange pasta sheet roller for pasta cutter attachment. Feed flattened sheets of dough through cutter.

Add 2 teaspoons of salt to 6 quarts boiling water. Gradually add pasta and continue to book at a boil until pasta is al dente. Stir occasionally to prevent uneven cooking. Cook for about 2-5 minutes, depending on thickness.

Stay tuned for Part II of the dinner tomorrow: the homemade sausage.