Sausagey Sagey Goodness

Reverb Broads Prompt for June 6, 2012

Share a recipe or meal that is a summertime favorite. (Bonus: Pick someone else's recipe or meal and make it, then blog about your results later on this month).
Amy

I pulled into the garage tonight after work and went straight outside with a pair of scissors and harvested a ton of sage and rosemary out of our herb garden. I've used a lot of the cilantro, mint and basil that we are growing, but I'd yet to use the rosemary and sage which are begging to be cooked with every time I go out to cut mint for iced tea or basil for pesto. So I cut and cut tonight and filled my hands with the fragrant herbs and went in to whip up a little dinner.

My husband, Joe, has a addiction to Serious Eats and Pioneer Woman and on a weekly basis sends me a flurry of recipe ideas. Half the time I dump them into my recipes file in my email, never to be seen again, but when I'm looking for new dinner recipes, it's really convenient, like having a cookbook filled with things I know Joe will like, right at my fingertips. And though I know this prompt is about cooking a summertime favorite, I figured grilling and kabobs are a perfect summer staple. We hardly turn our oven on during the summer, since grilling is so delicious, fast and a guarantee that I won't have to make dinner by myself, since Joe is the grillmaster in our house. Tonight's new recipe is from Serious Eats' Cook the Book series, Lorraine Wallace's Skewers of Sage Chicken with Sweet Italian Sausage.

I tweaked this recipe a bit, like I normally do, to use what I have on hand instead of having to hit the grocery store. I swapped out chicken breasts for thighs and I had a little bit of leftover hot Italian sausage in the freezer from some lasagna I made last week, so instead of using sweet Italian sausage links, I made some fast little meatballs with a bit of bread crumbs, an egg and some salt and pepper. I cooked the meatballs for about 10 minutes just to make sure they wouldn't fall apart when I put them on the skewers. But other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. They were wonderful. Awarded Joe's seal of meaty approval. The rosemary/garlic olive oil, the sage leaves grilled to crispy perfection between each chunk of juicy tender chicken, and then the slightly spicy, savory meatballs. Yeah, this recipe is going to become a summer favorite. Paired with roasted Brussels sprouts ala Bethany, and a fresh roll dipped in the leftover rosemary/garlic olive oil, and we were in summer dinner heaven. Other than marinating the chicken in advance or using an infused olive oil for added flavor, I wouldn't change a thing.

Give it a try yourself and see what you think. Though I highly recommend having someone else handle the grilling (and the kitchen clean up) so you can sit on the couch, relaxing with a pomegranate limeade (I'm sipping Trader Joe's version right now and it's so damn good) and the remote control, because you deserve it after making such a fancy looking meal. I promise I won't rat you out and tell anyone how easy it really was. So what was on the dinner table at your house tonight?