We are a group of college roommates living in Orchard South who have an apartment for the first time and have to learn to cook on our own. We created this series to give you guys suggestions on quick and easy recipes to make in your apartment. We decided to start this series off with a recipe we created that worked really well when cooking on campus.
To start off we are giving you a simple pasta recipe that packs a lot of flavor.
Tomato and Sausage Pasta
Ingredients:
1 pound of penne pasta
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 package of al fresco sundried tomato chicken sausage
1 cup diced onions
1 green bell pepper
1 small Jalapeno (remove seeds)
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 Tbsp. tomato paste
1.5 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
½ tsp. red pepper flakes
1.5 cups chicken broth
1 can of diced tomatoes
⅔ cup of heavy cream
1 package of baby spinach
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated romano cheese for topping
Let’s get cooking!
1. Boil the water for the pasta (if your stove is as bad as ours this will take a while)
2. Prepare all of the vegetables (wash and dice). Feel free to make substitutions and add in any veggies you have lying around. We added green bell peppers and thought that it worked really well with the other flavors in the pasta.
Once the vegetables are cut, place them in a pan with the olive oil. Don’t forget to add the garlic!
3. Chop the chicken sausage. For all of you vegetarians out there feel free to disregard this step and add extra veggies!
4. Add the chicken sausage to the vegetables and cook them all together for extra flavor. Then add in the tomato paste and the diced tomatoes. Don’t forget to season by adding salt, pepper and chili flakes.
5. Once the pasta is finally cooked, drain the pasta water out and transfer the pasta back into the pot. Add in the vegetables and sausage to the pasta, and mix thoroughly.
6. Once thoroughly combined, stir in the chicken broth (vegetable broth if you are a vegetarian), heavy cream, and spinach. When it is combined, add salt and pepper to taste.
7. The dish is now ready to serve! Feel free to top with some grated cheese. Here’s a picture of the finished product. This recipe could feed about 6 people and is just as good the second day.
Stay tuned for our next recipe!
Images : 1 / 2 and courtesy of Ashlyn Kaur, Summear Schenarts, and Annie Romanzo