Tuna Toast

The TV Made Me Do It: Sausage, Peppers & Onions



Watching cooking shows on television is a dangerous thing, especially if you're hungry. I'm sure many of you can relate to this. If I see Tyler Florence making his "ultimate" mac & cheese, then I'll crave mac & cheese for days....until I finally just break down and make some. Damn him and his "ultimate" dishes! Sometimes I'll crave things that I never even had a craving for until I saw it on TV.

Peppers and onions........

This happened to me last week. I was watching Everyday Italian while cleaning the downstairs (I do this often- it makes the work easier!!) and Giada started making what she dubbed "Italian street food." The deep-fried ravioli looked good enough and I wasn't much interested in the zeppole, but when she busted out some sausage, peppers and onions, I was hooked. It's something I have eaten maybe twice in my lifetime, but the rich tomato sauce coating each fat link made me drool, and when she stuffed them along with the onions and peppers into large Italian rolls, I knew I had to have one.

Sausages, nice and browned.......

As you probably have guessed, I try my best to make slightly healthier versions of fatty foods so that I won't grow a dress size over one meal. I found some smoked chicken sausages at Trader Joe's and had a few multigrain Roman Meal buns leftover from my last craving (see cheeseburger post). I browned the sausage, sautéed a ton of sliced onions and red bell peppers (I LOVE onions), added some wine and finished it off with garlic, canned tomatoes, tomato paste and fresh herbs. I figured it would be sort of messy to eat so I just topped each half of a bun with the mixture.

It doesn't win in the looks department, but it sure tasted good!

To go with the open-faced sandwiches, I quickly tossed some chopped cauliflower with olive oil and sea salt and roasted it in the oven at 450 degrees. This is probably my favorite way to eat cauliflower. The high temperature almost caramelizes the cauliflower and gives the edges a nice, golden brown color. I could honestly eat 2 heads of cauliflower in one sitting if it was made this way. I suppose that wouldn't qualify me as a glutton because it's a vegetable, right?! A light sprinkling of grated parmesan makes this side dish even better.

Golden brown cauliflower

J and I sat down and pretty much devoured our dinner. The sausage and pepper "sandwiches" were fantastic- it totally filled that craving. Although watching cooking shows when you're hungry can be dangerous, it is nice to be coerced into making food that you would otherwise not even think about.

Maybe next time I'll try the fried ravioli.............?

Have a great weekend!

Healthy cooking