3 MEALS: ONE KEY INGREDIENT: SPICY SAUSAGES

Hey lovely people,

First of all, I pray your week has started of well.

If you love breakfast as much as I do, you must love spicy sausages. I usually buy the farmers choice brand and have come to use them in many ways in my kitchen.

At first I only made them for breakfast or as a snack until I began to experiment and funny enough, these are now key meals in our home.

Have you ever watched the program "chopped" that comes on the food network? If you haven't seen it, you must! Its addictive and very original. It features 4 chefs [mostly amateur and sometimes professional] competing for a sum of money, by making the entree, main course and dessert. The flipside though is that they are presented with very interesting ingredients on every round. Let me call them "somewhat strange" ingredients. Sometimes they get salty ingredients for dessert and sometimes sweet ones for the entree and main course. Its amazing how "out of the box" the meals are since everyone does the coolest and weirdest things with the same ingredient and that is how they stand out in the end. 

So think of this as chopped, instead of the usual sausages and toast for breakfast, you can use these same sausages and make them in a funkier way.

>To start with, have you ever had SCOTCH EGGS
  This is one of the easiest ways to incorporate spicy sausages in a different way for breakfast. Check the full recipe on the link below:
http://cookingwithjaz.blogspot.com/2014/03/bachelor-meal-of-week-spicy-scotch-eggs.html

>How about SPICY MEAT BALLS
I absolutely love meatballs and the hubby does too so I make them every now and then. Below is a recipe that works perfectly for me and I absolutely love how the spice in the sausages gives them so much more flavor apart from the beef.
http://cookingwithjaz.blogspot.com/2014/02/spicy-pork-beef-mini-meatloaves-with.html

>Lastly SPICY BAKED PASTA
This is my favorite since I make pasta at home almost twice a week. Gimme spaghetti, gimme maccaroni, gimme tortellinis, but just gimme pasta in any shape or size.
 Here is a simple recipe to try out and enjoy.

Ingredient (Serves 3)
5 Spicy sausages
Pasta about 300 grams
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 large Red hoho/ capsicum
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup Cooking cream
1 tablespoon royco
Cheddar/ edam cheese
Oregano
Basil
Olive oil

>Start of by boiling some water for your pasta. Once it has boiled, add the pasta, a hint of salt and oil and leave to cook for 10-12 minutes. Once it is done, drain the pasta in a colander and put aside.

> Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

>In a pan, cook the spicy sausages for about 5 minutes. Once they are halfway done, but hard enough to cut, allow them to rest for a few minutes, then cut them in large chunks.

>Grate the cheese and put aside.

>Peel and chop onions and garlic. Wash and chop the red hoho/capsicum and set aside.

>In a sufuria, put chopped garlic and onions to cook with olive oil. Shortly after, add the red hoho and allow to cook. Follow by adding the tomato paste and spices except the royco. I like allowing the spices to cook at the beginning before adding the protein so as to remove any bitter taste. Use a little bit of water so that the spices and paste don't stick to the bottom of the sufuria. Add the chopped sausages and allow to cook. Follow by adding cooking cream and 1 tablespoon royco in 1/2 cup water and seal with a lid.

>After about 5-7 minutes, when the sausages have picked up all the flavors in the sufuria and the sauce has thickened, add the drained pasta and shredded cheese and mix well for about a minute. Remove from heat and add a bit more cheese and bake for 5 minutes until cheese has melted.

Simple, fast and sooooo good! 

<Note: This recipe doesn't work the same with normal sausages since the spicy ones have so much more flavor.>

So there you have it, 3 ways to make nice meals with spicy sausages as the key ingredient.

Also I'll have you know:-
 -I'm up to 16000+ pageviews-thank you Jesus! and thank you all for following and trying out my recipes.

-I'm now on Youtube, you can subscribe and check out the video here: CookingwithJaz

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Have a lovely week :)

Sincerely,

Jaz.

Spicy pork-beef meat balls with macaroni and cheese

Happy new week all!!!
Im excited about this recipe! After seeing a friend's post on facebook saying how she'd just made some meatloaf, I reckoned that it was time I had  a go at making meatloaf myself. Now I had never had meatloaf before but from the info I had seen online it looked like something I would enjoy *I mean who doesn't love a meat based meal!!! #carnivoresunite!!!*
I saw very many recipes online that gave me an idea of how to do it. As usual I had to JAZ-ify it and I decided to add a few ingredients to spice it up.
My main worry was that it may turn out dry but to my surprise and with the help of the extra ingredients it came out extremely moist and juicy. Now Ill have you know that I didn't have a bread baking tin so I opted to make meat balls instead but by using the same meat loaf ingredients.

Hope you enjoy this one guys, I sure did. My boo had an extra serving cause it was that good!!

Ingredients (serves 5-7)  
Mince meat 500g
3 Farmers choice spicy pork sausages
1 egg
3 slices white bread
1 cup milk
Unsalted butter
2 onions
6 cloves garlic
coriander/dhania
Worcestershire sauce
Bread crumbs
salt
black pepper
1 pack Macaroni
Oregano
Parsley
Basil
Royco
beef cube
Parmesan cheese
Cheddar cheese
1 bottle BIO Cooking cream
Red pepper /hoho
Pack of mixed veggies
1/2 cup Ketchup
1/2 cup Dark brown sugar
2 tomatoes
Vegetable oil/olive oil

Method
I started off by boiling the water for the macaroni. After the water was boiled, I added them and cooked for 7-10 minutes with a dash of salt and two tablespoons vegetable oil. I then drained them and put them aside. To stop the cooking process, run cold water through them and then add a bit of oil and mix well with your fingers so that they don't stick to each other. Heat oven to 180 degrees.

I then put 1 chopped onion and 3 cloves garlic to cook. After a min or two I added the chopped red pepper, abit of oregano, parsley and basil and the macaroni shortly after. I then added some cooking cream (1 cup), 1 teaspoon black pepper and a dash of salt (but not too much because cheese has alot of salt) Make sure you stir well. 

I then took it off the stove and started mixing the macaroni with the cheeses and the remaining cream in my baking tin. 

 After that I put the macaroni and cheese in the oven to bake for about 7 minutes (or as long as cheese starts melting and the top browns a bit) Once it is done, remove and leave to sit for about 5 min before serving.

Steam veggies with 1/2 beef cube and 1 teaspoon royco for some flavor for about 10 minutes. Make sure not to overcook so that veggies remain crunchy.

In another pan, I sauteed my chopped onion and the remaining cloves of garlic with 3 tablespoons butter.

In a bowl I soaked three slices of bread in 1 cup of milk. 

In a small bowl I grated two tomatoes, added half a cup brown sugar and mixed with half cup ketchup and put aside to glaze later.

I then took the three spicy pork sausages and removed the inside stuffing and threw the covers away. (see pic below)

In another bowl I put the minced meat, the chopped dhania/correander, 1 egg, Breadcrumbs, the pork stuffing, the sauteed onions and garlic with their butter, a dash of worsestershire sauce, a dash of salt and mixed with my hands. I then added the soaked bread and mixed well. 

After that I formed little balls out of them and put them on a greased oven tray. I then covered each one with the sugar mixture that I had previously put aside and put in the hot oven to bake for about 25-30 minutes. 

Every 10 minutes I opened the oven and moved them around to prevent them from sticking. I also added the sugary salsa on each one twice in between baking.

At this point the aromas coming out from the oven were simply heavenly!!!

The sugary salsa compliments the spice perfectly. After they were sizzling and cooked, I removed them from the oven to serve with the macaroni and steamed veggies!!!

So there you have it! Moist, juicy mini meatloaves served with creamy mac& cheese and crunchy veggies.

Now who wouldn't find that yummy. 

Simple and incredibly tasty!

Awaiting your FEEDback!