Hand-crafted pork sausage meatballs, flavored with garlic, oregano, fennel seeds, parmesan, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, with penne pasta, smothered in creamy, savory white sauce, baked in the oven, with a layer of soft mozzarella and grated parmesan, browned to perfection.
Unconventional, right?
It’s all because I made mistake.
We’d made this dish three days earlier. Well before Thanksgiving. My wife is a master of white sauces. I’m the meatball guy. We both work fast. When we have the ingredients, my wife and I can whip up this baked pasta dish in 20 minutes. I assumed we were done with that project. However …
My wife didn’t tell me that she only used half the seasoned pork to make our baked pasta dinner, days ago. There was an unseen batch of seasoned pork sausage, hidden in the fridge.
On Thanksgiving day, I discovered a ziplock bag full of half-finished, meatball-seasoned pork. Three days? Is it okay to let seasoned pork sit in the fridge this long? Clearly, it needed to be cooked, sooner rather than later.
Thanksgiving had an unexpected guest. We had to improvise, include this baked pasta dish in our Turkey-centric holiday plans. We had to make it. Even if we had no extra room for this uninvited dish.
Oh. My. God.
Turns out, seasoned pork, with the salt, the pepper, the fresh-chopped garlic, oregano, and nutmeg, reaches and even more-flavorful state, if allowed to mature. Left alone, refrigerated a few days, it was better than I could have imagined.
This is what the dish looked like before it was baked:
After it was baked:
This is not a traditional Thanksgiving dish, obviously, but it kicked turkey ass.
A holiday mistake turned into a bonus dish.
This is not to say the traditional turkey wasn’t the centerpiece. The turkey, mashed potatoes, and rich gravy … it all worked out.
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