homemade barbecue sauce

Dear Reader, I have not been having an easy time of it in the kitchen.

In the past couple of weeks, I have attempted to adapt my grandmother's brickle recipe to be gluten-free. That's a kind of frozen pecan and caramel crumble with a layer of vanilla ice cream in the middle. Kind of hard to get wrong. You would think.

Well, it was OK. A bit too sweet, not quite crumbly enough, kind of hard on the teeth.

Then I pulled out my. favourite. cook. book. ever. and attempted a white gazpacho soup with almonds and grapes.

It was so odd that I can't even think of the words to describe it. Kind of fluffy and acidic. Which probably doesn't make your mouth water.

Well, how about a simple mango gelato recipe with yogurt, honey and lime? Just – weird. The lime reminded me of salsa, which is not what I was going for in a dessert.

Saturday morning, I pulled out a very reliable breakfast cook book, mashed up some bananas and made banana oat cakes.

I fried them on the griddle, in lots of butter as directed, and they became mushy, gritty pucks.

  Instead of photos of bad food, here's my deck pot.
Isn't it pretty?

Now, when I go into the kitchen, Scott says, "Please don't make any more weird recipes." Which really boosts my confidence.

However, in the midst of all my bad luck, I did learn how to make a good barbecue sauce.

I don't know about you, but I get very frustrated when I try to buy barbecue sauce because the first ingredient is always some kind of chemical sugar. I did find a local company that makes barbecue sauce sweetened with honey, and I like it, but I wouldn't mind a bit more kick.

Enter Martha Stewart. (I won't call her "ever-reliable" because, with my recent track record, who knows what will happen the next time I attempt one of her recipes?)

With hot sauce, ketchup, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard and garlic, this barbecue sauce has a kick. It also has brown sugar and molasses, so it is sweetened but I wouldn't call it a very sweet sauce.

Martha has an excellent technique for barbecuing oiled and salted chicken (we did all thighs with skin that got crisp and tasty), where you don't baste the meat with the sauce until just before it's done cooking. That means the sugars don't burn black and the chicken finishes up with a nice glaze.

We had extra sauce, so we also tried it on sausages, with the same technique of just brushing it on at the end. We loved it. It was, I thought, finally good enough to be a recipe I could share with you.

Make this sauce. It takes 10 minutes. It actually works.

one year ago: eton mess with boozy berries
two years ago: german zucchini soup and sun tea
three years ago: minestrone with summer herbs and chocolate raspberry horse turds

martha stewart's barbecue sauce
from Martha Stewart
yields about 1 1/4 cups of sauce

1/2 c. ketchup
1 tsp. hot sauce
1/3 c. cider vinegar
3 tbsp. Dijon mustard
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. molasses

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Let simmer for 5 – 7 minutes, or until reduced to about 1 1/4 cups. Use what you need and store the rest in the fridge.

penne with sausage and greens

This was the winter of kale.

This was the spring of kale.

This is the early summer of kale.

We have learned how to make kale chips and we have learned the secret to enjoying kale: chop it into very small, tiny, miniature pieces. Chopped like that, we ate it almost every week and hardly noticed.

See those fine bits of kale and chard?

You may be a kale fan.

You may enjoy eating tough pieces of the same green leaf over and over again.

We're not and don't.

But we do, of course, want to eat local vegetables in season, which is why we're still eating kale six months after we learned to chop it very finely. (When does the season end???) And now Swiss chard is joining the kale ranks.

We've also sought out new recipes to use this everlasting vegetable, which leads me to today's offering: penne with sausage and greens.

Dear Ricardo calls for arugula, but I knew kale would work. Turns out, so does Swiss chard. All these green options make it a very flexible recipe for the whole year long. I like that, since it also comes together quickly – 35 minutes or so – so it's easy to make after work.

I seem to be using "fun" as a prerequisite for recipes these days – remember the potato chips in the lettuce wraps? – and this one definitely measures up. Because you actually get to snip open your raw sausages and squeeze that tasty meat right out! How fun is that? Let me tell you, it's pretty darn satisfying.

Using sausage meat like this is brilliant, really, since the meat is already seasoned and ready to make me a quick dinner. No fuss, no muss (except for the fun squeezing).

What more can I tell you?

Oh, right, about Ricardo. Do you know this dear man? We haven't actually met him, but we are addicted to his cooking videos.

Apparently, he's quite famous in his native Québec. A little while ago, he started recording "Ricardo and Friends" in English. Every episode, he has people come over and he cooks for them with great enthusiasm in his big Montreal kitchen. Sometimes, he cooks for the workers re-paving his street, sometimes he cooks for his friends' kids, but usually, he cooks for two or three good-looking Montréalais friends. (Why are French Canadians always so much more chic than English Canadians?)

The friends all ooh and ahh over the meal and we invariably wish he would invite us over.

Sometimes, we watch him in French to practise our French, but he seems to speak a lot more quickly in French. It's like his whole personality changes, which is fascinating in itself.

But anyway, back to this recipe. It works! It makes a great dinner! Don't worry about that whole cup of red wine – it cooks right in and helps finish the sausage-y sauce.

Bon appétit!

One year ago: Kathleen Claiborne's hot cakes
Two years ago: Chili pasta

penne with sausage and greens
adapted from Ricardo Larrivée
serves 4 – 5 

 


375 g. (3/4 lb.) penne pasta
30 ml (2 tbsp.) olive oil
450 g. (1 lb.) good sausage meat, pork or turkey, squeezed out of the casing
5 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp. Korean red pepper flakes or hot pepper flakes
4 plum (or any) tomatoes, diced
500 ml (2 c.) Swiss chard, kale or baby arugula, chopped finely
250 ml (1 c.) red wine
250 – 500 ml (1 – 2 c.) Asiago cheese, grated

Boil the pasta in salted water until it's al dente. Drain and toss with 1 tbsp. olive oil. Set aside.

In the mean time, heat a heavy-bottomed skillet or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the other 1 tbsp. of oil. Brown the sausage meat, garlic and pepper flakes, breaking up the meat into small pieces as you please. This will take about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes. If you're using chard or kale, add it now. Stir often until the liquid has evaporated, about 7 minutes. Pour the wine in and try not to panic about the amount of liquid you now have in your pan. Cook for about 3 minutes. Add the pasta and stir until everything is hot. Taste for seasonings and add salt and pepper if necessary. If you're using arugula, stir it in now.

Serve in wide, shallow bowls with lots of Asiago cheese.