Tomato, Arugula and Sausage Penne

One of my biggest kitchen challenges is finding creative ways to use ingredients, especially vegetables, before they go bad. It’s hard, especially when cooking for one, to find multiple uses for foods, especially since, given that one meal often creates multiple days of leftovers, it’s very easy for me to tire of one ingredient quickly.

My go-to recipe for clearing out the veggie crisper is a salad. I almost always have some sort of leafy salad green hanging out in the fridge — add some baby carrots, a little cucumber, a quarter of an avocado, maybe a sprinkle of cheese and some balsamic, and I’m good to go.

But salads can get boring, and sometimes, I’d really like something more substantial for dinner. Occasionally, I’ll try to think ahead, and plan two different meals with key quick-to-spoil ingredients, but that happens so infrequently that I can’t even find an example to share with you here. So most of the time I end up just sauteing or roasting the vegetables and then topping them with a fried egg. Delicious, but not exactly groundbreaking stuff.

A half-bag of leftover arugula posed a big problem for me, since I’m not a huge fan of this peppery, slightly bitter green. Eating it in a salad was too much for me, and it’s not something you can really cook down in a skillet.

A million “arugula recipe” Google searches later, I found a recipe for pasta that combined hot Italian sausage with slightly blistered tomatoes, arugula, garlic and cheese. I don’t need to tell you how quickly I ran to the store, even chasing down *gasp* tomatoes in pursuit of this fantastically light summer dish. The whole thing can be made in the time it takes you to boil and cook your pasta, and perhaps best of all, I’m all out of arugula. WIN.

What about you — what issues do you frequently face while cooking?

Tomato, Arugula and Sausage Penne
Adapted from Eating Well

– 2 teaspoons olive oil

– 8 ounces whole-wheat penne rigate (or any other short pasta)

– 8 ounces hot Italian turkey or chicken sausage, casings removed

– 3 cloves garlic, minced

– 4 packed cups arugula (you can also use baby spinach)

– 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved

– 2 ounces finely shredded Pecorino Romano (you can also use Parmesan cheese)

– salt and pepper, to taste

1) Set a large pot of water to boil while you mince the garlic and halve the tomatoes. Cook the penne according to the directions on the package.

2) Meanwhile in a large skillet, brown the sausage on medium-high heat, breaking the meat into crumbles, for 2 to 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and tomatoes. Cook for 2-4 minutes, until the tomatoes soften, then add the arugula and cook for an additional 1-2 minutes, until the greens wilt. Remove from the heat and set aside.

3) Drain all but 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid from the pasta. Top the drained pasta with the cheese, salt and pepper (go light on the salt, since the cheese is very salty). Add the tomato-sausage-arugula mixture and toss until well combined. Top with extra fresh-ground black pepper and grated cheese, then serve.