Sausage and Zucchini Rice

Day 3-The mood in the kitchen was not a good one. I was frustrated almost from the start. As I was taking out the ingredients, I was getting mad at them. Some examples of my anger: pine nuts (why do I have to toast you? why can’t I buy you already toasted?), zucchini (how the heck do I cut zucchini? why did I pick a recipe with a vegetable in it?), parmesan (I wish I didn’t feel that buying the already grated was a such waste of money!), and onion (AGAIN!!!! WHY?!!!). Am I the only person that feels like this?

I guess 3 days of having to cook is 1 too many for me. The pine nuts ended up a little too toasty. I chopped the onion and decided to call Anthony (my husband, he is allowing me to us his name) in and have him show me how to cut the zucchini. I was a bit spastic (by spastic I mean mad and lacking patience) and ended up having to cut the second one on my own (I couldn’t quite grasp how to make zucchini square, but does it really matter what it looks like? Isn’t taste the important factor?). After butchering the second zucchini and grating the dang parmesan, I was ready to cook.

The recipe originally calls for white rice and hot Italian sausage, but I like to make things a little healthier and more nutritious. So, I substituted the white rice for brown and the Italian sausage for poultry sausage. Once I got the rice started, I moved on to the sausage. The sausage out of the casing felt and looked icky. Trying to crumble it into the pan was useless; all I ended up doing was squashing it a bit. As it was cooking I tried to break the sausage up like ground beef, but it wasn’t as easy. I finally accomplished it. Next it was time to take the sausage out and throw the zucchini in. Now I’ve eaten zucchini plenty of times, but never cooked it. So I know basically what it should feel like when it’s done. This was only supposed to take 4 minutes (are they crazy?!), it ended up taking around 10 minutes. Maybe it was my terrible cutting of the zucchini, but I still don’t think it would only take 4 minutes to get it tender.

Then the recipe gets even screwier. The sausage needs to go back into the pan (with the zucchini) with 1 cup of chicken broth and ½ cup of water. After pouring in the chicken broth, there was no way I was adding the water. It would have been a watery mess. I thought 1 cup of broth might have been overkill. Once that is heated through you add the rice (the rice also took longer to cook then what the recipe said). Maybe that’s why you need the chicken broth, but definitely DO NOT use the water. It would end up too wet.

Final Product:

Overall thoughts about the recipe: The brown rice and poultry sausage were great changes to the recipe. Who cares how the zucchini is cut as long as it’s all roughly the same size. DO NOT use the water. Buying Parmesan cheese already grated is still a waste of money. And give yourself more time then what the recipe says, in case your rice and zucchini do not cook as fast as the recipe says.

I would definitely cook this again. I loved how it tasted. Yum! It felt pretty healthy too, minus the butter. Although I think the butter is part of the reason it tasted really good.

Totals: 25-30 minutes prep time, 30-40 minutes cooking time, 2 pots.

I’m giving myself a break tonight and not cooking. We will be having frozen pizza. Rochester pizza and people from New Jersey do not mix. It’s been decided in our household that we would much rather eat frozen pizza, than have any pizza in the area delivered to us. The crust is way too thick and the sauce is too sweet. There will be more on the pizza topic later.

Where to find the Sausage and Zucchini Rice Recipe-

http://www.rachaelraymag.com/Recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-index/dinner-recipes/Sausage-and-Zucchini-Rice