An indefinable dinner pasta with salame

Ok, first, this dish works. But I've given up naming it.

This is a pasta dish, but I never heard of Italians cooking pasta in a curry-based sauce. Well, look at the finished product and judge for yourself:

The shiny bits in the plate, that's sardine. For a beverage, I went with an ice slush margarita in a wine glass (sorry, host doesn't have margarita glasses).

So, what's going on here? Well, I bought a Daniele Foods salame, labeled 'salame with wine.' Daniele Foods is in Pascoag, R.I.

What do we always do with salame? We put it in a sandwich. And maybe I should have stuck with that, but my experimenting went well beyond ditching the slices of rye.

I opened a bag of spiral pasta and spread out enough of it in a 10-inch sauce pan to completely cover the bottom (no second layer).

I chopped up a similar amount of fresh green beans and one carrot, and put in just enough water to submerge the contents of the saucepan. Turn on the heat and bring to boil.

While we're waiting for the water to boil, I chop up about half the salame and open one can of sardines packed in tomato sauce.

Back to the saucepan, sprinkle in a lot of curry powder, enough to create a powdery ochre sheet on top of the water. Now sprinkle in basil, shake it in almost as much as you did the curry.

In a cup, add a little water, enough to dissolved two tablespoons of starch, whisk and add that to the saucepan. Sprinkle in salt to taste.

After the pasta and vegetables have boiled for 10 minutes, add the salame and sardines. You don't want them cooking more than two or three minutes, just enough to heat them and diffuse some of their flavor into your contents.

By now, most of the water should have boiled out and you have everything saturated a thin curry and basil sauce.

This serves three people. It has a mild, savory taste. There is not enough fish in the saucepan to overpower it; in fact, the fish portion was very mild tasting. This salame is a little bland, but cut into quarter chunks, you have  pieces sizable enough that you can at least appreciate the taste.

One last note, notice I never mentioned hot peppers. I usually throw in some spicy seasoning, but I wanted to try this without any to see if it worked. It did.

Buen provecho!

Turkey chorizo: is the healthiest choice tasty?

I'm not a fan of some of the things that people try to do with turkey meat, but I have to admit (and I'm paraphrasing Elle Woods here) "it is not altogether unfortunate tasting."

Andy Garcia Foods, a San Antonio chorizo factory mentioned here previously, came up with Mama Garcia's Turkey Chorizo some time ago. My first and most natural reaction to seeing it on the meat shelf was probably, "Oh, hell no."

In the interest of science, however, I picked up a tube of turkey chorizo and consumed the contents over the course of three breakfast meals.

I've given a number of very similar versions of my hueves-con-chorizo breakfast recipes to the point of ad nauseum, but, again, in the interest of science, I have to maintain some baseline, so as to compare this chorizo to other egg-and-chorizo breakfasts.

Going with the usual ingredients: two eggs, chopped onion, tomato and hot pepper.

So, other than the turkey, what's different about this chorizo?

Well, I'll tell you! First, when you squeeze it out of the casing it is thoroughly consistent in density, or more accurately the lack of density. It doesn't have clumps of meat and fat like all other chorizos. It comes out, to put it politely, like toothpaste. Other images may come to mind, but let's not dwell, let's not!

Turkey, compared to any sausage I've ever tried, is kind of bland. I suspected, therefore, that this would be bland, too. So, I did something I never ever do when I cook with chorizo and I added a little salt while it was grilling.

I also grilled the vegetables at the same time. Chorizo only needs a few minutes to cook through. I stirred occasionally and added the egg last as usual.

It turned out adding the salt was a good idea. Once the meal was on the plate, it was tasting pretty good, but just a little short on salt (to my taste, and I'm usually more conservative with salt than most).

I'm not going to do the math, but here is a link to Mama Garcia's Turkey Chorizo nutrition facts. Lower in fat, blah, blah, blah. (Not something I worry about much, although perhaps I should, but there's plenty of folks out there that do).

All in all, it's a pretty good substitute for a pork chorizo. Put it this way, compared to a Mac Dee McNugget, you'll be way ahead.

P.S. -- The side with this is a bean mix of three-quarters pinto bean boiled in a ham seasoning with chopped chipotle and one-quarter cow peas.

It is a dah-yum good bean side for this or any number of meals. I've also had it with melted cotija cheese bits and guacamole for dinner tacos.

Buen provecho!

Migas with a "dry chorizo"

Migas is one of the most traditional Tex-Mex breakfast dishes and the main three ingredients are fried or dried tortilla chips, eggs and cheese.
In fact, you don't need anything else but a little salt to call that migas (pronounced mee-gas). The typical choice of cheese is a mild cheddar.
Most restaurants, however, will add a salsa to their migas. The salsa is a blend of tomato (or tomatillo), hot pepper, and onion. Or in lieu of a salsa, the cook will throw in a chunkier blend of the same ingredients (tomato or tomatillo, hot pepper and onion).
Since this is a sausage and chorizo blog, I'm going to throw in a little chorizo, although that would ordinarily be considered a side, as in "migas con chorizo al lado" (migas with chorizo on the side), or "migas con frijoles fritos al lado." (I'll skip that last translation).
The chorizo I'm going with is labelled a "dry chorizo" and it's made by Diana Foods Inc. in Miami, which is a subsidiary of Goya. I've tried a dry chorizo before, and they are very different from Mexican chorizos, so much so that I don't consider them the same thing at all.

Using these Spanish/Cuban-style dry chorizos, you have deal with them like you would a beef jerky: tough and salty. You almost cannot dice them fine enough. Cut it into very small pieces, keeping in mind the dominant taste -- other than meaty -- is salt and paprika.

A side note here, I could not find a website for Diana Foods Inc. The Internet listings I did find referred me back to Goya Foods. This is a recurring situation I find with East Coast chorizo producers. Their websites either don't exist or they have a very modest presence on the Internet.

Food prep time! Chopping tortillas into sections, chopping chorizo, canned jalapenos and onion. (There is a second dish I make where I chop a tomato; I did one with and one without).

I would normally put a dry chorizo on the grill first. It's already cooked, but it takes a while to get the grease to run. However, since we have refrigerated tortilla bits, these corn tortillas need to fry a little.
You are not trying to make Doritos! It's common to fry them very hard, but don't. You just want harden the tortillas bits to a leathery texture.
Soon after the chips start cooking, toss to one side the chorizo.
After a couple of minutes, throw on the onion and jalapeno.
Next to last is the eggs, AND stir it all together.

Our last ingredient is cheese. I prepared two styles of migas here. One is with cotija, a Mexican white cheese and doesn't melt.

The other, and more traditional, is an American sharp cheddar cheese that does melt. Also, this dish has tomato.

Notice the proportion of dry chorizo with each compared to the other ingredients. It's a modest proportion -- 25 percent or less of the volume of ingredients before egg and cheese is added.

Any more and it's going to overpower the meal. It will be too salty, too heavy.

Migas with cotija cheese and homemade tortilla on side

Traditional migas with cheddar cheese

Traditional migas with cheddar cheese:

The tortilla chips are fried, but not crunchy! Don't overdo the grilling.

And buen provecho!

Smoking beans and veal

Veal and pork sausage has been a challenge for me. I've come up with a few recipes (see my previous Opa's entries) that were palatable enough. 

But comparing veal brats to other sausages, these don't come close to my Top 10. "It's not you, veal brat. It's me. I prefer the taste of grain and grass-fed meats over milk-fed any day."

I do, however, offer a couple more suggestions on recipes. One is to check out Opa's website for a dish involving simmering the bratwurst in beer. 

Or you can go with this: a spicy stew using pinto beans and chipotle. It's all about the bean soup. Boil a cup of beans in salt, cilantro seasoning, chopped garlic and one chopped chipotle pepper (this is also known as morita seca or roasted, smoked jalapeno). You end up with a smoky-flavored, tasty bean soup.

Don't ask me to explain the chemistry, but for whatever reason, veal/pork sausage goes really well with this dish. Open a George Killian red (or your choice of beer) and enjoy. 

I find that veal/pork sausage chopped into this (I did grill the brats first) provides a great balance. There is something sufficiently earthy about the smoky beans and spices that overcome that milky taste in the veal.

I guess it's kind of like what happens to milk in chocolate. Does that make sense?

Buen provecho!

I guess it's kind of like what happens to milk in chocolate. Does that make sense?

Buen provecho!

Chorizo San Luis: when you want a little more fat

Chorizo San Luis is another chorizo product from San Antonio-based Chorizo de San Manuel Inc.

I've written on Chorizo de San Manuel, which is a leaner sausage. And from this company, the lean choice is my favorite. But a lower fat chorizo is uncommon. Traditionally, chorizos are very greasy, so accommodate the public's preferences, Chorizo de San Manuel provides a few choices.

Chorizo San Luis: traditional chorizo with the grease

Nothing all that new with the breakfast recipe, though. This plate is lightly grilled chorizo. Put the hot pepper and onion on next, and the scrambled egg goes in last.

Well, almost last. I chopped some cotija cheese and mixed that in while the egg cooked. Don't overcook, don't let it dry out.

Top this with fresh chopped tomato and serve with greased up white corn tortillas. As long as we're going with a greasier chorizo, why not go all the way and heat the tortillas on the same greasy grill? You can work the fat off later.

Yes, there's a few extra calories, but it's not like I'm asking you to stuff yourself with chocolate cake.

Buen provecho!
And forget I mentioned cake.

A Tex-Mex Country sausage breakfast

Tex-Mex country sausage breakfast

Chorizo may be the preferred sausage in Hispanic households, but the "country sausage taco," (that's what we call it), has been a popular alternative for generations.

Any Polish pork or beef (or pork and beef) sausage link will do.

In its plainest form, you get chopped and grilled kielbasa sausage scrambled with egg. Onion and other fixings are optional.

This plate is a pork sausage chopped and grilled with scrambled egg and grilled, chopped onion and poblano pepper (the traditional peppers for a meal like this are jalapeno or serrano, but if you've been following my blog you know I prefer poblano).

The tomato is chopped fresh and put on the side.

As you can see, the white corn tortillas are getting heated.

The tortillas are store-bought. I've been wanting to give a recipe for making homemade tortillas, but it turns out that I suck at it. Okay, that's a little harsh. My homemade are edible, but I haven't gotten them to come out "a toda madre" (totally awesome). They're not like what I get at Garibaldis on Bandera Road. (A San Antonio hole in the wall that we frequent.)

Buen provecho!

Kiolbassa gets distribution deal with Sam's Club

Here's some welcome news. Kiolbassa sausage is expanding its territory.

Kiolbassa Provision Co. entered a distribution agreement with Sam's Club that will put the San Antonio-based sausage maker's products in 73 stores in the upper Midwest and Southeast, reaching into 12 states.


Kiolbassa brand sausage can be found in grocery stores such as H-E-B, Costco, Wal-Mart, Brookshire's, Albertsons, Super S, Lawrence Brothers, Grocery Outlet and several others across parts of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, as well as Texas. Find a complete distribution list at www.kiolbassa.com/what-s-grilling.


As the third-generation Kiolbassa to head the San Antonio-based sausage manufacturer, company President Michael Kiolbassa explains that his family name, which means sausage in Polish, goes beyond a mere icebreaker. It’s a marketing opportunity written into his family’s DNA, says the 48-year-old Kiolbassa, whose family traces its roots to the first migration of Polish immigrants to mid 19th century America.

The Kiolbassa brand has grown to become a market leader in Texas using its "Real Meat, Real Smoke, Real Sausage" tagline to symbolize its commitment to quality and freshness against national competitors.

Founded in 1949, Kiolbassa brand sausage is made with choice beef and pork, fresh spices, and is naturally smoked. It has no fillers, no MSG, and is gluten free. In fact, it has the lowest sodium content among its national competitors, a bonus for health-conscious consumers fixing more meals at home.

“Generation after generation, Kiolbassa brand sausage has been the choice for consumers who demand quality and expect excellence,” says Kiolbassa. 

The 25,000-square-feet Texas plant will produce 10.5 million pounds of sausage this year. Sam’s Club in-store demos will encourage shoppers to sample Kiolbassa.

“If it’s not the best sausage you’ve ever eaten, we’ll give you your money back. Guaranteed,” says Kiolbassa, adding that the company’s growth has been built on that commitment.

Kiolbassa’s popular high school tailgating tradition airs on Food Network’s “Unwrapped.” A complete list of products, recipe promotions are 

at www.kiolbassa.com.