November 17, 2009

It looks pretty good, but


yuck.

One of my food hobbies is renovating recipes, that is, attempting to make them healthier without sacrificing (too much) of the flavor and texture. This one didn't quite work. It's a baked shells dish with tomatoes, Italian sausage and broccoli rabe. The original is a recipe from Everyday Food, which for the life of me I can't find on the website. Maybe they don't post recipes until the next print issue is out? I don't know. Anyway, I digress. Of course. For this recipe, I decided to use brown rice pasta instead of regular medium shells. I used Tinkyada, a brand of brown rice pasta I've used often, but this time with disastrous results. Despite seriously undercooking the pasta in the boil phase of the recipe, it was already seeming overdone. Once it was baked -- completely fallen apart. Gnarly.

I did however, have great success with the other renovation to the recipe: using non-meat sausage (oh, I know some of you are rolling from that phrase)! I used Field Roast Italian Sausage, and I thought it was yummy. It added the oregano and fennel flavor of sausage, along with some of the texture and chew of meat, but left out the fat, calories and then ummm... animal part.

So I guess I was 1-1 on this reno. I just can't get the squishy rice pasta texture out of my mouth. Eeww.

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