Spaghetti squash with sausage and sun-dried tomatoes

I discovered spaghetti squash a few years ago after going gluten-free and really have fallen in love with this squash.  They're not that common in Fairbanks and seem hard to find at the grocery store most times of the year.... 

But today I made this really fantastic spaghetti squash dish with sausage, sun-dried tomatoes, and other delightful things.

I've been hanging out in the Mountaineer State for the past few weeks, and I've had a spaghetti squash sitting on the counter without really knowing what I was going to do with it.   When I went into the town earlier this week to the grocery store, I ended up doing some impulse shopping when I saw this sausage in the meat section.

(I'm ignoring that is has MSG in it since it has such an awesome drawing on the package)

The grocery store in Terra Alta is pretty small and carries the basics that you would expect at a small grocery store.  I've been on the lookout for any local products to try.  My first attempt at buying local was a bag of West Virginia apples.  I didn't even know that they grew apples is WV, but then I discovered why that was-- they ended up being pretty bruised and a bit mealy, but they made great applesauce... I had higher hopes for the Mountaineer sausage, and it turned out to be really tasty.

Spaghetti squash with sausage and sun-dried tomatoes

Ingredients

a Spaghetti squash (I used half of it for this recipe)

Sausage

a few garlic cloves

a sweet onion

½ green bell pepper

1 tsp oregano

½ c sun-dried tomatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

¼ c grated Parmesan cheese

salt & pepper

Directions

Spaghetti squash can be boiled, baked, or microwave.  I cut spaghetti squash in half, scooped out the seeds, placed it rind side up on a cookie sheet at bake it for about 30 to 40 minutes at 375° F. (You can also cook it whole by poking holes all over the squash and baking it for about an hour.)

Form the sausage into small balls.

Add the sausage to a pan over a medium heat.  I covered the sausage with a lid to reduce the amount of grease splattered.

Cook the sausage thoroughly, and then drain excess grease from the cooked sausage on a paper towel.

Remove the grease from the pan by pouring it into a heat-safe container for disposal.

Mince the garlic and add to the pan over a medium heat.

  

Dice the onion and add it to the garlic.

Chop the green bell pepper and add to the pan once the onions begin to brown.

When the bell pepper are cooked but still have a slight crunch left to them, add the oregano, mix together, and remove from heat.

Use a fork to separate the spaghetti squash into strands.

Scrape the flesh of the spaghetti squash into a large mixing bowl.

Add in the onion mixture, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, sausage, and Parmesan cheese.

Season with salt and pepper, if necessary.

A locally grown fall feast amongst friends-- curried carrot soup, kale, and salmon

I have this group of friends that meets a few times a year where we gather in one home and spend the evening cooking, dining, hanging out, and catching up.  With everyone's busy lives, it usually takes us a few weeks to find an evening that works for everyone.

For at least a year or two, we were on an eggplant kick where we would pick a different cuisine and build a meal around some sort of eggplant dish-- grilled eggplant, baba ganoush, moussaka, eggplant in black bean sauce, and even an African dish of some kind... I don't even remember some of the other ones.  It's amazing how versatile eggplant is!  But then *one of us* decided that she didn't really like eggplant that much, so now we pick a different theme for each meal.  For our latest feast, we decided to focus on locally grown food, so we had curried carrot soup, wild Alaskan salmon, and sautéed kale.

While Johnny, Kelly, and I were busy in the kitchen, Jenny and Brent entertained the kiddos.

While Alaska is famous for its salmon and ginormous pumpkins, I don't think that people Outside realize what amazing carrots are grown under the Alaskan midnight sun.  With our short, intense growing season, we've got these delicious sweet carrots.  I always make sure to stock up on at least 20 pounds of Spinach Creek Farm's carrots just before the close of the farmer's market-- around the middle of September.   They actually stay surprisingly crispy in the fridge for months, but sadly, my stash is already almost gone.

Kale is quite hardy, so it grows well here since our growing season is quite short and we can get hard freezes as early as August.  In fact, when I has harvesting kale for this dish, I found pellets of ice on some of the kale and the temperature hadn't reached above freezing in a few days.
 
Curried Carrot Soup

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large onion
big bunch of carrots
~ 1 heaping tbsp of curry powder
salt and pepper
1 can of coconut milk

Directions

Chop the onion, it's OK if it's coarsely chopped since the soup will be pureed later.

Heat a a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a pot and had the onion.

Once the onions are soft, add the curry powder.

Johnny adds some fresh ground pepper to the pot.

Chop the carrots into smallish-sized chunks and add to the pot.

Kelly adds some water to the pot (or broth also works well).

Simmer the carrots until they are tenders.

 

Using an immersion blender, purée the soup.

 

Add the can of coconut milk.

 

 Stir in the coconut milk and serve.

Kelly's Decadent Salmon

Ingredients

wild Alaskan salmon

Marinade
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 dry vermouth
1 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp parsley
thyme
ground pepper

Butter
1 stick of butter
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 tsp lime zest


Directions

Johnny fillets the salmon.

Kelly mixed up the ingredients in the marinade.

Kelly pours the marinade over the salmon.

Covered with aluminum foil, bake at 400° F until done (~15 minutes or so).

Once the salmon is cooked, spread the butter mixture over the top of it and let it infuse it.

Sautéed Kale

Ingredients
~ 1 tbsp of olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic
~ 1 tsp of sesame oil
~ 1 tbsp of soy sauce
handfuls of kale

Directions

Over a medium high heat, add the oil.  Once it's hot, add the garlic.

Brown the garlic until it's slightly crispy.

Add in a few handfuls of kale.  It will cook down quite a bit.

Once the kale is beginning to wilt and turns a shinier green, drizzle the sesame oil and soy sauce.  Stir in before serving.

Finally all the components of the meal are ready to go-- the soup, the salmon, and kale... plus Jenny & Brent brought a saffron rice dish to serve with the meal.  Yum!

And the evening really isn't complete until at least one of us ends up on the floor from laughing too hard.

Curried sweet potato with kale

On my last trip to Juneau, I ended the trip by visiting and staying with my friend Marie and her family.  Marie is also gluten-free, so we often discuss and recommend new recipes.  She was telling me about the delicious sweet potato-kale dish she made many times.  Since there was kale to harvest from her garden, we though we'd make it for dinner to accompany a silver salmon her husband had recently caught.

Ingredients
olive oil
garlic
~ 3 sweet potatoes
big bunch of kale (we inadvertently had some chard mixed in with the kale)
curry powder (maybe a good heaping teaspoon or so?)
salt and pepper

Directions
Begin by peeling and cutting the sweet potatoes into small bite-size cubes.

Toss into a steamer and

steam until tender.

Mince the garlic.

Tear the kale into bite size pieces.  It cooks down quite a bit so we probably threw in about enough kale to fill half of a gallon-sized ziplock bag.

Heat a bit of olive oil to a wok,

saute the garlic,

and add in the kale.

Cover the wok and let it cook down.

Cook it until it's tender and shiny green.

Add in the curry powder, salt, and pepper.

Then toss in the steamed sweet potatoes,

and mix it all together.

It's especially good served with wild Alaskan salmon!

 A perfect dinner for my last night hanging out in Southeast Alaska with friends!