Several weeks ago I made this, an imitation of a dish I had a Terroni. The original dish consisted of some kind of Italian sausage, a semi-soft cheese I don't remember the name of, dandelion, combined in an olive oil based sauce with fresh pasta. My version, despite having different ingredients, tasted remarkably similar. The basic formula of a bitter green, a savoury meat, and soft melty cheese seems easy to make palatable. If I went back to Terroni and noted the taste carefully, I'm fairly confident of being able to reproduce it at home. I wonder how I would made a vegetarian version. Sausage is a difficult item to replace without meat.
I make a very similar dish a few times last week, based on this Mark Bittman recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/dining/15mini.html
ReplyDeleteThe past few times I made it, I was able to add some delicious vegetarian sausage I brought back from the U.S. made by a company called "Field Roast." The kind I had was apple & sage flavoured sausage, and it was incredible. In the U.S., you can also get (and I have in my freezer) veggie sausage patties by Morningstar Farms that are really delicious, as well as really excellent veggie sausage crumbles by GimmeLean.
These faux-sausages are actually among the most accurate tasting/textured veggie meats I've ever had, so I actually think sausage may be one of the easier meat-based items to replicate without animal products. Unfortunately, they're for whatever reason not available in Canada.
That recipe looks good. The croutons looked like mushrooms at first, which I think I would prefer.
ReplyDeleteI think the things you're talking about that look like mushroom stems in the photo are actually the fried garlic chips, which are really delicious.
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of bread crumbs in general (I use panko instead of proper croutons), but they are really nice in this recipe, especially when combined with parmesan. It's a nice textural contrast to the pasta and vegetables.
I made a version with mushrooms, rapini, reggiano, and a little bit of vermouth, and it was quite good.
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