This is a guest article by Laura of The Golden Road.
If you are interested in being a guest author for Joyful Abode, please send an email to “contribute at joyfulabode dot com”, and I will contact you.
Hopefully, guest articles will become a bi-weekly event here, so step up and make it possible! (Come on… I know you’re out there!) It can be a recipe, a craft project, a home decor project you recently did, organization tips, some no-fail cleaning advice…
Laura writes:
I seriously love cooking and food. I’m addicted to the Food Network. As I (obsessively) check my email, I scan through the sponsored links that g-mail offers, to view several recipe feeds.
So, when my brother decided to cook today, I seized the opportunity for company in the kitchen, and sought out a recipe that looked somewhat easy and tasty for us to make together.
The recipe we ultimately chose was a Food Network gem: Farfalle with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms. Don’t you just love descriptive titles?
We weren’t able to find turkey sausage in our grocery store, which the recipe obviously calls for, so I decided that we would buy some lean ground turkey and improvise. What’s life without a little excitement, hm? We got everything else that was required for the recipe, with the exception of the kind of cheese that the recipe calls for. We instead got a package of pre-grated “Italian” cheese (not, perhaps, the most quality way of cooking but it still tastes good!).
The cooking part was quite fun with my brother around to help (or man the camera, as the case was half of the time). We got our things together: put the big pot onto the stove with water in it for the pasta, and got that going.
Because the recipe called for turkey sausage, and the best we could come up with was ground turkey at our local grocery store, I improvised. After breaking the ground turkey into the pan, I sprinkled in some herbes de provence and a very small bit of red pepper. My family doesn’t like things very spicy, so I went very, very light on it. I went a bit too light, all things considered, because we found that the dish could have used a bit more “kick” in the end. I’m sure actually using turkey sausage would remedy this.
While the turkey was browning, I rinsed the mushrooms and began chopping them. I left rather large pieces of mushroom so that those in our family who are picky about mushrooms could easily spot them and pick them out. This didn’t seem to affect the cooking time or process at all. After the turkey was fully browned, I drained it (what little there was to drain - the wonders of lean meat!) and set it aside. Then, I tossed the mushrooms into the pan.
The mushrooms cooked for about five minutes, “until there [was] no water left,” and then we added most of a package of frozen peas. Sure, the recipe gives an exact amount, but who needs measurement?
I cooked the peas for another five to ten minutes, mostly to warm them, and then combined the mushroom and peas mixture with the ground turkey.
Here is where we ran into our one minor hiccup: we put our water on a burner that takes far too long to get the water actually boiling, so the mixture had to hang out for a little bit while we waited for the water to finish coming to a boil. Once it was boiling, it was just a matter of waiting for the farfalle noodles to cook fully.
After the pasta was drained, I mixed in the turkey, mushrooms, and peas. Then I added the rest of the olive oil and our shredded Italian cheese into the mixture. We stirred it together, and then served it!
(photo courtesy of Food Network)
The general consensus was that it was very, very good, but a little bland, which I attribute to not using enough spice on our ground turkey. Next time I make this recipe (and there will definitely be a next time!), I will add a bit more red pepper to the turkey if I am unable to locate turkey sausage. My whole family - even the mushroom hater - gave this recipe two big thumbs up.
