Rachelle’s Italian Sausage, Onions, and Peppers

February 4, 2016November 6, 2022 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 40 Comments

Dear Doris’s Italian Market and Bakery,

Please open a store in Nashville so I can get delicious homemade Italian sausage, sweet or spicy, with or without fennel, veal sausages, meatloaf mix and braciole-cut beef when ever I want them.

And, please send Lester and his delightful butcher friends from the Boca Raton store, to the opening. They know stuff.

Whenever I go to Florida to visit my family, I always make a trip to Doris’s and to Joseph’s Classic Market. At Joseph’s, I buy the best sfogliatelle I’ve ever tasted

and the best cannolis, with real cannoli cream.

At Doris’s, I buy sausages galore: pork, veal and chicken, freeze them, pack them in my suitcase, and fly them home with us to Nashville. My husband goes with me to Doris’s because the store is so much fun to browse in, but he starts to shake his head when I start filling up the cart with pounds and pounds of sausages. Always the more practical one in the family, he wonders how I plan to get it all home. “Don’t worry honey,” I say, “I always find a way.”

This year, because I was working on a recipe for a Portuguese stew, my sweet husband searched out and found fresh Portuguese linguica at Boca Brazil Supermercado. It’s one of the many reasons he is my Valentine and no other.

I, meanwhile, am my grandfather Carl’s granddaughter — when he went to Sicily to visit relatives, ages ago, he brought home cured salami hidden from Customs inspectors in the toecap of a shoe that was packed in his suitcase. I thought that was strange as a child, but I totally get it, now.

A few weeks ago, when I was in Florida, Mom’s sister Rachelle made sausage and peppers for dinner on our first night in town. It’s her husband Steve’s favorite meal from childhood. Was it ever good! So good, we had to have a repeat performance later in the week so I could blog it.

Part of the fun of making this dish was all of us going grocery shopping together to get the ingredients. As you can see, this recipe isn’t complicated.

Because we didn’t live in a big city, with Italian markets, while growing up, my mother often bought pre-packaged Premio Italian Sweet Sausages. They are great in meat sauce and also excellent grilled. In Nashville, you can buy the Premio brand at Costco, five pounds for $12.00. The inhouse-made sausages at Doris’s are $3.50 a pound.

Yield: Serves 6

Ingredients:

2½ pounds Italian sweet sausage (8 links)
8 cups sliced sweet bell peppers (5 peppers)
5 cups sliced onions (3 medium)
1/3 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt

Mise en Place:

Instructions:

This is truly the easiest recipe on the blog.

Prep veggies. Here’s Rachelle, favorite great-aunt to my children, chopping veggies.

Prep sausages: cut apart links.

You’ll need two frying pans. One for the peppers and onions and one for the sausages.

Sauté the onions, garlic pepper and salt in olive oil over medium-high heat until translucent and soft, about ten minutes.

Add the peppers. Continue to sauté the peppers and onions over medium-high heat until the peppers start to soften, and then let them simmer over low heat while you cook the sausages.

Sauté the sausages in 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a different pan.

Brown on all sides over medium-high heat.

Slit sausages to allow heat to get inside. Cover pan and let simmer for 20 minutes over low heat.

Add sausages to peppers and onions. Be sure to tap off as much fat as possible from the sausages before you add them to the peppers and onions.

Saute together for 5-10 minutes. It will look like this when it is done.

Can be served as is, or over pasta, or in a hoagie. It works for Whole30 if you skip the bread and pasta and serve it with a green salad.

Two family photos of Rachelle, just for fun:
Rachelle, my grandmother Marion, and my brother Chris. Rachelle and Grandma are visiting us in Baltimore and by the looks of their hair, they’ve been to Bridget’s Beauty Shoppe.

This is a photo of Rachelle in Sicily with Granddaddy Carl and Grandma’s cousins Marianina and Salvatore. Rachelle was in high school at the time.

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Auntie Terry’s Italian Fried Cauliflower

December 21, 2015November 26, 2025 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 28 Comments

“Granddaddy ate them by the bucketful,” said his daughter, Rachelle. I know for a fact that my Mom’s cousins, Mary Lou, Angela, Phil, Jeannie, and Paula, will be making them on Christmas Eve. I have wonderful memories of going to my Auntie Terry’s house on holidays and eating them. I’m talking about fried cauliflower. We are a family that loves fried cauliflower and fried celery, broccoli, and carduna if we are lucky enough to find it.

This is a family favorite. When my children gush over something I’ve made and then ask how to make it, I know it is time to blog it. I want the next generation to learn how to make the family favorites.

Here is my grandmother’s recipe given to me by Mom’s sister, Auntie Terry.

Yield: 18 Fried Cauliflower Patties

Ingredients:

1 head cauliflower
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons minced garlic
¼ cup chopped parsley (or 2 tablespoons each, parsley and basil)
3/4 cup (3½ ounces) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Romano
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ olive oil mixed with ½ canola oil for frying
Lemon slices (optional)

Mise en Place:

Prep the Cauliflower for Cooking:

Cut cauliflower into half-inch slices. Cut out the center stem. This will leave you with many small, sliced florets.

Blanch Cauliflower:
Fill a medium-large pot with 3 quarts of hot water. Add 2 tablespoons of salt. Bring to a boil. Add florets and bring to a rolling boil. Allow to boil vigorously for 1½ minutes.

Remove florets from heat and drain through a colander. Leave florets in the colander and cover. Allow to steam, covered, for at least five minutes. The beauty of this method of cooking the florets is they will be uniformly cooked and not mushy or waterlogged.

Prepare the Egg Batter:
First, add eggs to a mixing bowl and beat. Add everything else but the flour and mix for about 30 seconds.

Add flour and mix for about 15 seconds more. The reason to add the flour last is you don’t want to “awaken” the flour’s gluten by mixing it too much.

Add cooked and cooled cauliflower to the egg mixture and gently stir with a spatula until the cauliflower is well coated.

Fill a 12-inch sauté pan with about one cup of olive oil. You will be sautéing the vegetables, not deep-frying them. Set the heating temperature to medium. Let oil heat for a few minutes. Do not let the oil get smoking hot.

How to Test for Correct Oil Temperature
The best way to test if the oil is hot enough is to dribble batter into it. If the batter sizzles, the oil is hot enough. If the batter immediately turns brown, it is too hot. In that case, remove the pan from heat and let the oil cool down some.

If the oil is too hot, the patties’ interior will remain doughy while the exterior turns crisp. If the temperature isn’t hot enough, the batter will become like a sponge, sop up the oil, and the patties will taste bland. Plan on the patties cooking for a total of four to five minutes.

Remove cauliflower from pan with a slotted spoon. I tap the spoon against the inside edge of the pan to release as much oil as possible. Drain cauliflower on paper towels. This recipe makes three batches of six cauliflower patties.

Serve hot, warm, or cold. They are amazing at any temperature. When they are still warm, I like to squeeze lemon juice on each one before I eat it. I think it catapults the flavor to another level of deliciousness!

My relatives, who have made these for a lifetime, have assured me there will come a time when I will be able to make the batter without measuring it, as they do. Paula gave me the best advice about the consistency of the batter: “the batter should be thick enough to coat the cauliflower and still allow it to run off slowly like pancake batter would.” She also starts off each batch by frying a little of the batter (without cauliflower) to taste test if she’s gotten the batter’s seasonings correct since she makes her batter with Bisquick and without measuring the ingredients.

A photo of my grandparents. Grandma made all of her aprons.

Other yummy veggies:
Roasted Ratatouille
Cauliflower Three Ways: Roasted, Blanched and Mashed
Roasted Butternut Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and Cranberries
Amazingly Delicious Sautéed Carrots
Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Asparagus and Chicken

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“Croatian Cheese” a Flavorful and Exotic Appetizer Made with Feta and Goat Cheese

July 1, 2015April 20, 2023 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 17 Comments

About ten years ago, we hosted a Croatian high school student for a month at our home in Nashville. His name was Bruno. The following summer, his family invited us to their summer home on Brac, one of the Dalmatian Islands on the Adriatic coast. That vacation was one of the best trips of our lives.

Bruno’s parents, Lilijana and Mario, fixed our meals using local produce and products on the island. The honey came from the beehives of a friend, the red wine from a vat at a cousin’s house, the olive oil was pressed at another cousin’s home, and even the fresh tuna on the Fourth of July came from a friend at the pier. It was all so marvelous.

Lily was a fabulous cook. She probably used fifteen types of ingredients to make our meals. Her cooking was simple, fresh, and delicious. Some afternoons, she would mix equal parts of sheep milk feta and goat cheese with olive oil, garlic, and herbs and serve it with crusty bread as an appetizer. We devoured it. We dubbed it “Croatian Cheese.” The first thing I did when I returned home was to recreate it.

Ingredients:
Approximately equal amounts of sheep (feta) and goat milk cheeses — the packages I used had 1 pound of feta and 10 ounces of goat cheese
A few sprigs each of rosemary, basil, and parsley
*3 small cloves of freshly chopped garlic
1/3 cup extra virgin, first cold pressed olive oil

Prepare the aromatics: snip the leaves and peel the garlic. Uncooked garlic has a much stronger flavor than cooked, so more is not better in this case

I make this in a food processor for convenience. Once you add the cheeses, just pulse the ingredients; do not puree. Refrigerate for a few hours to give flavors time to meld.

Directions:
Pulse garlic cloves first. Add herbs and pulse. Add cheeses and pulse briefly. Finally, drizzle olive oil in and pulse one last time.

Garnish with herbs or thinly sliced scallions, if desired.

Below is a photo of my favorite memory of Croatia — our two families went on a sailing trip together.

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Award Winning Buffalo Chicken Chili

March 5, 2015November 26, 2025 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 20 Comments

The last time I spoke to my brother Sam, he told me he and his family had sat around the kitchen table drooling over my recent blog post, My Favorite Silver Palate Chili, a beef-based chili with many beautiful layers of flavor. After much discussion, one of his children asked, “Yeah, Dad, but who’s gonna make it?” And there the discussion ended. I have to agree, the Silver Palate chili ingredient list is daunting. I promise you, Sam, this chicken chili recipe is a cinch to make, especially if you use store-bought rotisserie chicken for the meat.

This recipe should be called Now You See It, Now You Don’t Chili because each time I have seen it served, the crockpot bowl has been completely emptied by the end of the night. At the 2nd Annual Vanderbilt Liver Transplant Team Chili Cook-Off this year, this chili, submitted by transplant team member Lisa, took home the top three awards: Best Chili, Spiciest Chili, and Kid’s Choice. I’ve modified Lisa’s version by adding a few more ingredients.

If you want an additional challenge, I’ve provided instructions on how to make your own Ranch Seasoning Mix rather than using the MSG-laden prepackaged mix.

Yield: Makes 4.5 quarts

Ingredients:

⅓ cup olive oil
1 large red onion, chopped
2 or 3 colorful sweet bell peppers, seeded and chopped
2 pounds cooked chicken meat
8 cups chicken broth
2 14.5-ounce cans diced fire-roasted tomatoes
6 15-ounce cans cannellini beans, drained, not rinsed
2 7-ounce cans diced green chilies, drained
½ cup buffalo wing sauce (more if you like it really hot)
2 packages ranch dressing mix, or 6 tablespoons homemade ranch mix*
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon celery salt
½ teaspoon salt
2 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese, cut into small squares for quicker melting

Chili Toppings:
blue cheese crumbles
freshly chopped cilantro.

How much meat does a rotisserie chicken yield?

I spoke to Costco’s butcher, who said all of their rotisserie chickens weigh between three and five pounds. Here is a great tip he shared with me: those that weigh the most are the ones where the top of the chicken is smushed up against the container’s lid. The butcher told me any chicken not sold within two hours or that weighs less than 3 pounds is used to make the pre-made dishes like the chicken salad.

This chicken weighed 4 pounds 7 ounces and cost $5.00. It yielded a whopping 2 pounds 8 ounces of boneless meat.

There was 1 pound 13 ounces of skin and bones leftover. I placed it all in a bag in the freezer for a future pot of Chicken Stock from Rotisserie Bones.

Some of the other ingredients:

Fire Roasted Tomatoes add bite to soups. The ingredients include tomatoes, onion, and garlic powder. I like to pulse them in a food processor before using them.

Buffalo Wing Sauce is a hot sauce with added butter (or natural butter flavor). Folks use it as a condiment and pour it over cooked chicken wings.

Instructions:

Wash and core peppers and peel the onions. I often cut them into chunks and pulse them together in a food processor.

Prep chicken. If using rotisserie chicken, pull the meat off the bones and chop into bite-sized pieces.

Sauté the vegetables for 10 minutes until they are soft and translucent. Add diced chicken and stir.

Add the rest of the ingredients except for the cream cheese and toppings and simmer for about 30 minutes. The hot sauce gives it an orangey color.

Before you are ready to serve, cut the cream cheese into small chunks and add to the chili. Stir the soup as it melts. Add more buffalo sauce if you want more heat.

Wash, dry, and snip the cilantro leaves. Serve in a separate bowl alongside a bowl of blue cheese crumbles.

Homemade Ranch Seasoning Mix:
I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and make my own Ranch Salad Dressing and Seasoning Mix, so I searched the web for a homemade version and found one over at Gimme Some Love. This mix is excellent, and the advantage is there are no preservatives. The mix has a 3-month shelf life in the refrigerator.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup dry buttermilk
2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons dried dill weed
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons dried onion flakes
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried chives
1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Whisk ingredients together until blended. If you want a more finely ground seasoning mix, pulse the mixture in a food processor a few times.

Homemade on the left, packaged on the right.

*3 tablespoons of mix = 1 packet of store-bought mix. To test the mix’s flavor, I stirred in ¼ cup of plain Kefir, which is similar to liquid yogurt.

It was delicious as a salad dressing.

You might also like these other soups, chilis, and stews:
My Favorite Silver Palate Chili
Kelly’s Duck Stew
Bruce’s Turkey and Sausage Gumbo
Aunt Bridget’s Chicken Soup with Little Meatballs
Chicken Stock from Rotisserie Chicken Bones
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Always check the website for the most current version of a recipe or pattern.

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@judyschickens

Italian style meals, sustainable gardening tips, and lots of segues in between

Super Bowl Party Foods

Rachelle’s Italian Sausage, Onions, and Peppers

Auntie Terry’s Italian Fried Cauliflower

“Croatian Cheese” a Flavorful and Exotic Appetizer Made with Feta and Goat Cheese

Award Winning Buffalo Chicken Chili

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