Perfect Beer Bread!

  

  This recipe is the result of a lot (and I do mean a lot) of trial and error.  A couple of years ago, Jessi's aunt and uncle started getting us baking and seasoning mixes from Tastefully Simple.  Now, we're generally not box-mix people, but this brand has some awesome products.  Some of our favorites are the Key Lime Cheese Ball mix (awesome with graham crackers), the Almond Pound Cake mix (great with a bit of homemade, sweetened whipped cream), and their trio of dip mixers.  Our absolute favorite, however, is their Bountiful Beer Bread.  It's a dense, hearty bread with a rustic charm that goes with everything from cheeses, to spreads, to dips. 
     We went through this stuff like water, however, and it started to get a bit expensive.  We decided, based on the ingredients, that it shouldn't be too hard to 'clone'.  Yeah, we were wrong.  About a year (and several failed attempts) later, we've finally got something that, while not exactly a clone, is pretty close and something that we love almost as much as the original.  For four mini loaves or one standard-sized loaf:

     -2 cups all-purpose flour
     -1 cup organic barley flour (we get ours in the bulk section at HyVee)
     -1 tsp. baking soda
     -1 tsp. baking powder
     -1/4 cup white sugar  *(brown sugar can be substituted; see note below)
     -a dash of salt
     -12 oz beer **(see note below)
     -about 1-2 tablespoons of butter, melted (optional)

     Combine all of the dry ingredients and the beer and blend with a kitchen spoon until combined.  The dough will be very thick, so don't worry.  Divide into four mini loaf pans or one regular loaf pan.  The dough will be lumpy and rustic-looking; don't worry, when baked, this only adds to its charm.  Melt the butter (if desired) and pour evenly over the top of each loaf.  This will help the top to crisp up nicely in the oven.  For mini-loaves, bake at 350 for 35 minutes.  For one large loaf, bake at 350 for about 50-55 minutes.  It's hard to over-bake this bread (its density keeps it from drying out) but be careful not to burn the crust.  When cutting, use a razor sharp, serrated bread knife.  The crust is kind of crumbly, and the bread doesn't always cut clearly, but it tastes amazing.  Simple, rustic, and satisfying.  This is awesome served with beer (of course) and hearty cheeses, honeyed butter (that's a recipe for another time), or a variety of dips/spreads.  In the future, we're hoping to do some riffs on this recipe, but a couple of notes below will give you an idea of where to start. 

*while white sugar is best with lighter beers, light or dark brown sugar may be used with darker, sweeter beers for a little bit darker, richer bread.  You can experiment with different kinds of semi-refined sugars as well.

**a word on beer in this recipe; you can play around with the types of beer you use in this bread, with a couple of exceptions.  DO NOT use anything hoppy (i.e. American Pale Ale or IPA), or anything with a particularly strong or unusual flavor.  Some of these can come off as a bit funny in the bread.  We typically use either a crummy light lager (anything from Budweiser to St. Pauli Girl), a German-style weissbier (Paulaner, similar), or an American wheat beer. Boulevard Wheat is our go-to for this recipe.  These types of beers lend nice, grainy flavors to the bread but have a low level of hoppiness.  We've also found that Scotch Ales (ex. Belhaven Wee Heavy, Great Divide Claymore, etc), used alongside light or dark brown sugar, make a nice, rich beer bread as well.  Again, just make sure you don't overdo it in terms of alcohol or hop rate or, in the case of some Scotch- or Scotch-style ales, smoke character.

It's 103 outside...what to eat??

    Unfortunately for our waistlines, my wife and I are both very, very into food.  So you know that when we don't feel like eating, something's up.  But we're now in our second week of 100-degree-plus temperatures, and it honestly can take your appetite away at times.  So, what to eat? 
     Well, thanks to Jerry S. from church, we have an abundance of fresh, locally-grown cucumbers in our fridge.  They're crisp, decidedly 'summery' and refreshing, so we'ev been trying to figure out tasty ways to use them.  Again, Sycamore comes to the rescue, in terms of inspiration.  Mike and his kitchen crew whip up a mean Greek Salad up there, and we decided we'd do a riff on this, adding warm pita bread and a bit of our favorite, homemade hummus. 
     Throw together some red onions, thinly sliced cucumbers, reduced-fat Feta cheese, (in my case) some kalamata olives, some of our hot peppers from the back garden, and a lemon viniagrette based on the one here, and you have a flavorful, refreshing, healthy meal for when the mercury spikes and the throught of eating anything heavy is repulsive.  Sidenote: we didn't have any sumac, and substituted dried oregano in the dressing.  It wasn't bad, but the acid was a bit overpowering for our tastes; we may play with this a bit in the future, but it was certainly a good starting point.  Eat this as a wrap:

or as a veggie platter, with hummus and pita on the side:

Either way, you won't be disappointed!

4th of July (Ultimate) BLTs

     Call me crotchety, un-American, or whatever you will, but Independence Day has never been high up on my list of favorite holidays.  Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for the (many) liberties I enjoy as a citizen of this great nation, but I've become increasingly disillusioned by the political cluster/downward spiral/quagmire of the past decade or so and was was even less enthusiastic than usual for the Fourth this year.  Couple that with 103-degree temperatures, a fireworks ban thanks to extreme drought and wildfire danger, and the fact that I spent all day cleaning up a ruptured keglet of beer in my den (ripping up carpet, padding, cleaning rugs, etc) and it was pretty much just a Wednesday for me.  I'll honor my country's heroes on Veterans' and Memorial Day, thanks; you can keep the Fourth. 
     Curmudgeonry aside, we decided after a (very) long day that we ought to do something for the Fourth, since there were no fireworks (or anything else, for that matter).  So we started to think, what could we do that's quintessentially 'American'?  So much of what we cook is, if not technically-speaking authentic, it's at least largely inspired by European and Asian cuisine.  What could we do that was truly American?  I mean, we've got...I dunno, the hamburger?  The hot dog?  Twinkies?  Hmmm...
     As it has so many times in the past, local favorite Sycamore came to the rescue.  While Syc is one of our favorite places to stop in for a drink and a light bite during happy hour (they have a great draft/bottle menu, Jess loves their house merlot, and their small plates are delicious) we can't really afford to go out for an actual dinner there more than about once a year.  That being said, we have had a ton of fun recreating some of our favorite dishes that we've had there or seen on the menu.  Once again, they don't disappoint.  The idea? BLTs (undeniably an 'American' classic) but with lightly-battered, fried tomatoes. 
     Since I had 30-45 minutes in between each (and there were many) passes with the steam-vac we rented yesterday, I figured I had time to do a bit of 'slow-food' cooking.  I decided to make my own bread (cibatta, recipe below) and we would get as many of the ingredients as we could from right down the street at our tiny, local (largely organic) general store.  It's good food you can feel good about: made at home, with locally grown/raised/at the very minimum purchased ingredients.  We picked up a couple of beautiful, dense, ripe tomatoes, some small zucchinni and an onion for a side dish, and some thick-cut bacon at the general store.  I was going to pick up something from the local Patchwork Family Farms  but Tom up at the general store suggested that for this particular application, we might be better served by the product below: ultra-thick cut, applewood-smoked, and uncured. 

What can I say?  The guy knows his bacon, and this served us very well. 

     Normally, we might have gone down the street to Ellis Bakery, a tiny (and I mean tiny) operation that's literally not much more than a stone's throw from our house but, as it was a holiday, they were closed.  Lacking Randy's killer ciabatta, I decided to take a crack at it myself.  Make no mistake, the bread came out nice; the outside was super chewy like I like, and the flavor was great, but it wasn't nearly as airy as a proper ciabatta should be, which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that I rushed both the rising time on the biga (as I'd forgotten to start it the night before, thanks to our beer keg disaster) and the rising time of the dough itself.  I'm not going to repost any of either of these recipes, because we didn't change a thing (other than the rising time, which was highly-abbreviated).  Again, the flavor was perfect and the crust (the 'water-spritzing' trick really helps!) was awesome, but the bread was definitely a bit too dense.  Next time, I'll try for 7-9 hours raising time for the biga and the full raising time (both times) for the dough itself. 

    So we've got bacon, bread, lettuce (yeah, we had some regular old iceberg lettuce from HyVee), what about the tomatoes?  Well, we started with good, organic tomatoes from Tom and his wife.  In terms of a recipe for the crust and technique, we started here.  We didn't have any cornmeal, however, and not wanting to go into Columbia (or even Boonville) we just decided to do without.  Instead, we used 1 cup total of Panko breadcrumbs, rather than 1/2 cup breadcrumbs and 1/2 cup cornmeal, along with the flower.  To this, we added a bit of dried Italian Herb blend, some Emeril's Essence (Jessi's favorite general seasoning blend), and maybe 1/4 to 1/3 cup of grated Parmesan 'shake' cheese.  Coat with flour, into the eggwash, and then into the Panko mixture, and fry 'em up on medium-high heat in a bit of vegetable oil until golden brown, and you're done.

     Well, we're almost done, but we needed some kind of side dish.  Well, we'd bought small zucchinni squash and an onion at the general store, and we have a ton of yellow Hungarian Wax peppers in our garden.  Hey, ya know what?  We also have a bunch of bacon fat left over from frying up that bacon.  Betcha didn't know...veggies be much tastier with the addition of bacon fat!  Jessi sauteed up a nice mix of peppers, onion, and zuchinni, adding a bit of Emeril's and some Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt and these were de-friggin-licious. 

     All in all, a delicious (if not particularly healthy) way to end what had been, for all intents and purposes, a rather crummy day.  Now, pretty sure I need to go spend some serious quality time with the treadmill...

Peach Walnut Cinnamon Roll...er...Coffee Cake

   

     Yup, the responsibility for the (unintended) transformation of this recipe from cinnamon rolls into coffee cake lies squarely with me.  Ask my wife, she'll tell ya!  That being said, I think it turned out pretty damn good nonetheless.  At her current job, the various employees take turns bringing in breakfast on Monday mornings.  Since Jess is leaving soon for her new job, she wanted to take in breakfast one more time before leaving.  When Jess first started out at her current job, she made her take on this recipe from the Oh She Glows vegan cooking blog.  She thought that, given their popularity, she might want to try a bit of a different take on that recipe. 
     Wanting to go with a more typically 'summer' fruit than pumpkins, she decided to use one (21 oz, I believe) can of HyVee peach pie filling.  Further modifications are as follows.  To begin with, we didn't use any vegan ingredients.  While neither Jess or I are vegans, the reason for not making this recipe vegan had more to do with the cost of vean ingredients (and the fact that we didn't have them on hand) than anything else.  And, while I am not currently (and never will be) vegan, one of Angela's recipes at Oh She Glows made me eat my words that 'vegan food, by its very definition, is crap'.  Thus, if you are vegan, or are making this for someone who is, I have every reason that Angela's original version is just as tasty as ours.  Anyway, on to the recipe changes!
     While we kept to the recipe and used almond milk (it's what we had around), we replaced the vegan butter in the original recipe (in all of the portions, i.e. the dough, the streusel, the frosting, and the pan sauce) with regular butter, replaced the egg replacement with one large cage-free egg, and used reduced-fat cream cheese for the vegan cream cheese in the frosting.  We also decided to use chopped (and lightly toasted) walnuts rather than pecans (again, they were what we had on hand) and they work well with peaches. 
     I have to say, this is one of the best sweet-roll doughs I've ever tasted; it takes me back to when my Grandma M. used to make sweet rolls for our family when we'd visit them out in Kansas.  Though she's been gone for over a decade now, my first taste of these rolls instantly transported me back there to that time and place.  Yeah, they're that good.  Anyway, the first thing we had to do was to mix up the dough.  For what it's worth, it's amazing what fresh, active yeast will do for a yeast bread, and our hyper-active yeast (along with the 100+ temps we've been having) certainly helped this dough to raise in near-record time.

     First we rolled out the dough on the countertop and spread the can of peach pie filling evenly over the top, followed up by a layer of the cinnamon/sugar/walnut mixture. 

     After that, it was as simple as rolling it up like a jelly roll, and then cutting it neatly with dental floss into perfectly shaped rolls.  Well, it should have been that simple.  But then again, I was involved, and as Jess has always said, I'm a mean cook, but my knack for presentation has never been...well...all that great.  Therefore, I managed to royall eff up the cinnamon rolls.  It's ten-thirty PM.  The grocery store is at least a 45-minute round trip.  What to do? 

     In a moment of genius (or in desperation to save my marriage) I decide that we're now making a coffee cake (which I'd actually been wanting to do for some time) rather than cinnamon rolls.  Though it looks like trash before baking (see below) once baked, and especially once iced, it looked (and tasted) awesome. 

     In the end, we were really happy with the way that they came out.  Fresh out of the oven (and even reheated the next morning for work) they were awesome, but once they'd been refrigerated they seemed much denser and heavier.  The peach didn't come through quite as strongly as we thought it might, but they were still delicious.  Jess said that if she makes these with peaches again, she'll go a bit lighter on the cinnamon in the cinnamon/sugar mix to try to bring the fruit out a little bit more.  Also, cramming these into a 9x13 pan as a 'coffee cake' rather than cinnamon rolls worked really nicely, but if/when we do this again, we will definitely leave out the 'pan sauce/sticky bun sauce' from the recipe.  In cinnamon roll form it works well, but in cake form, where there's nowhere for the excess to run off, it has the potential to get sickeningly rich.  We used paper towells and dabbed a lot of this off prior to baking, and were definitely glad we did.  All in all, another baking success and a great way to say farewell to some great coworkers!



Grown-Up Mac 'n Cheese (v. 1)

     As many of you know, my wife has recently accepted an awesome new job, doing what she's wanted to do for so long (librarian/media specialist) at a local high school.  I asked her how she'd like to celebrate, and she answered, 'with Champagne, of course!' Neither of us are typically Champagne people, and the two that we truly love (Paul Bara Brut Reserve and Moet & Chandon Rose Imperial) are either nearly impossible to get in the US or prohibitively expensive.  When we got married, however, my boss at the time, Nimit, gave us a couple of bottles of what used to be known as Moet & Chandon 'White Star', but is now known as (I think) simply 'Imperial' or 'Nectar Imperial'.  It's quite tasty, is about as 'entry-level' in terms of price as authentic Champagne gets and, well...HyVee had it when we were there. 
     So now the question was, what to pair with it.  We looked around a bit online and saw (much to our amusement and horror) that some of the most highly-recommended pairings (and these were from Champagne geeks) were things like potato chips and popcorn.  Yup, that makes sense; blow $50.00 on a bottle of Champagne and eat it with Lays.  Anywho, there were the other, classic pairings (i.e. eggs, oysters, etc) but we wanted something different.  We came across one suggestion that a suitably adult variation on the classic mac 'n cheese made for an excellent pairing and, since we'd been thinking about putting together just such a recipie for some time, Jess figured that we should give it a whirl. 
     We took as inspiration this original recipe from Brooke at Cheeky Kitchen, but decided to tailor it a bit more to our tastes.  As it's been awhile since we made this, I can't remember the exact ratios of the various cheeses that we used, but this will get you in the ballpark and, for what it's worth, we decided we would have added a bit more cheese and changed up the recipe slightly anyway.  That being said, here goes!

     Since I've provided the link to Brooke's original recipe above, I won't reprint it all here, but rather only the changes we made.   In the pictures directly above and below are the three cheeses we used (in addition to the cream cheese in the original recipe) in our version.  We chose the Uniekaas smoked Gouda because we needed a decent amount, it melts wonderfully, the flavor is generally pretty good, and it's quite affordable at HyVee.  The other two cheeses, we went with smaller amounts, and I had to purchase them specially at World Harvest (which we love) here in Columbia.  In addition to the smoked Gouda (about 1 cup shredded and loosely packed) we used Old Amsterdam aged gouda and a delicious Irish Cheddar whose name I unfortunately can't remember).  Here's where my memory gets fuzzy; I think we used ratios of around 1:1/2:3/4 for the cheeses here but I honestly can't remember. 

     If you're trying to make a mac 'n cheese dish based on this recipe, what's important to note is that (at least by amount) the smoked Gouda should be the dominant cheese here, with the Irish Cheddar next in line and a somewhat smaller amount of the stronger, tangier Old Amsterdam.  After tasting the dish, I thought it needed a little more cheese (it was surprisingly restrained and light-tasting considering the ingredients), but I would keep ratios similar to those above, although I might even up the amounts of Cheddar and Gouda. 
     We left out the blue cheese in the original recipe, along with the pears.  We love the combination of pears and Gorgonzola, but it wasn't really what we were going for here.  As far as other changes, we used curly egg noodles rather than traditional macaroni because 1) we had a ton of them in our pantry and 2) we wanted something a bit lighter.  They worked wonderfully, and kept the dish nice and light.  Finally, instead of crushing up Club crackers and making buttered cracker crumbs, we simply mixed a tiny bit of melted butter and Panko breadcrumbs (dirt-cheap at HyVee) for our topping.  Into the oven it went, until nice and golden-brown on top.  Other than being a bit lighter in intensity than I would have liked (Jess didn't seem to share my complaint) this was really tasty.  Oh, and it complemented the Champagne nicely!

Chocolate Stout Cake (sort of)

    I say 'sort of' because we did a little bit of a riff on the original recipe (and what we typically do) this time, but it came out amazing!  Years ago, back when my wife and I were first dating, we were out shopping and she had wanted to swing by somewhere like Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc to pick up scrapbooking materials.  Deciding to grin and bear it, I went along and, years later, I'm glad I did.  That day we picked up what has proven to be a gold mine of dessert recipes (all of a chocolatey nature): "Chocolate", a one-off issue of Fine Cooking magazine.  Actually, after doing a little internet research, it looks like it was rereleased in 2012, and you might even be able to snag it off store shelves if you're lucky.  If not, there are a few for sale on Amazon.  If you're just interested in this recipe and would like more detail than I give here, the original version by Nicole Rees can be found on the Fine Cooking website, here.  At any rate, for those of you that love chocolate (and beer) like we do, this one is definitely a keeper. 

     Ingredients for Cake-
       -10 oz. good stout
       -1/3 cup dark molasses (the original recipe says not black strap, but we've used all dift. types)
       -1 and 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
       -3/4 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed)
       -1 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder
       -1/2 tsp. baking soda. 
       -1/2 tsp. salt
       -1 and 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened at room temp (plus more for the pan)
       -1 and 1/2 cups brown sugar (light, dark, or mixed)
       -3 large eggs, room temp
       -6 oz. semisweet choolate, chopped very fine

     Ingredients for Optional Glaze-
       -3/4 cups heavy cream
       -6 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped

    The cake itself is easy to make.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a large bunt pan (or about 12 of the mini-bunt pans) and coat the inside with either sugar (which we prefer, for a slightly crunchy outer layer) or cocoa powder.  Tap out excess.  Alternatively, you can use non-stick cooking spray to prepare the pan, but if you do this, don't dust the inside with either of the aforementioned ingredients.  On high heat, bring the molasses and the stout to a simmer; remove from heat and let stand. 
     At this point, I need to say a bit about the beer you should use.  We've experimented with several different beers over the years, and have learned a couple of things.  First, most stouts will work nicely in this cake, but don't use one that's overly hoppy (ex. Victory's Storm King), as these flavors will not work well in the finished cake.  You can also use most porters with excellent results, but again, avoid highly-hopped examples, like those brewed by Boulevard or Founders.  These are all great beers, but drink them with the cake rather than using them in it.  In general, rich, chocolatey, or coffee-stouts (if you like a little coffee with your chocolate) work best.  If using Guinness, I'd go for the malty Extra Stout (especially nice with its molasses notes) over the weak, thin-bodied Guinness Draught.  We mixed things up a bit this time, however, and used a leftover bottle of Bell's Batch 9000.  This was an odd beer, in that it blurred the lines between American Stout, Old Ale, and Strong Ale.  I didn't particularly care for the beer originally, and as I still had a couple in the cellar, I figured it might work for cooking.  Looking at the label, I noticed it was brewed with molasses.  Molasses in the cake, molasses in the beer...hmmm.  So we went for it.  More on that later.
     Beer excursus: complete.  Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and soda, and salt.  Cream the butter until smooth, and then add the brown sugar and beat for about three minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time, and then alternately add (small portions at a time) the stout mixture and flour.  Finally, stir in the finely (and I do mean finely) chopped chocolate.  According to the original recipe, this is to be baked 45-50 minutes, or 35 for the mini-bunt pans.  We have observed, however, that the large bunt pans can take a bit longer, and that the mini ones are usually done in about 20 minutes. 
     Bunt cakes are a pain in the butt to get out of the pan (maybe it's just us, but we can never seem to accomplish it without tearing up the cake a bit) and you need to get them out before they're fully cooled.  The recipe suggests 20 minutes, but we usually take them out after 10-15.  For the glaze, simply bring the cream to a boil, take it off the heat, add the chopped (fairly finely) chocolate, and whisk until blended.  Don

     Notes: This makes one seriously dense, decadent chocolate cake.  This time around, the use of the Bell's Batch 9000 (sadly long since unavailable for purchase) was awesome; the entire cake was full of rum/brandy and molasses notes.  These actually almost overpowered the chocolate, but it was delicious, and for some reason reminded me of something that would be absolutely perfect in the winter served with gingerbread ice-cream or the like.  One of the great things about this recipe is that it just begs to be riffed on.  For example, add a touch of espresso powder and use a great coffee stout (especially Redband by Great River or Breakfast Stout by Founders) if you like coffee with your chocolate.  Perhaps add a bit of cinnamon instead, and use milk chocolate in the glaze for a 'Mexican Hot Chocolate' cake.  If you prefer a bit of fruit, make up a simple raspberry or blackberry coulis to drizzle over the top, along with the chocolate sauce.  Or, you can do what we did, and just serve it alongside some fresh strawberries and vanilla bean ice-cream.  For what it's worth, the cake is great fresh, reheated, or refrigerated (and even freezes well), but the chocolate sauce should be made up fresh and not reheated, as it gets a bit funny in terms of texture (as seen in the picture below). 



Baked Ziti with Meat Sauce



     This is one of our favorites, but we've never actually sat down and written out a recipe for it; it's typically just what we happen to have on hand or, if we're feeling posh, some higher-end ingredients.  Since we had fresh basil in our herb garden (finally!) and are going into our lean summer months, we decided to go with something simple that would be easy and relatively affordable to feed a group of people.  After all, Jessi's family was in town and we had to eat!
     Start with about a tablespoon of good extra-virgin olive oil in a heavy-bottomed cast aluminum sauce pan, and saute half a large white onion.  When the onion becomes translucent, add the spice mixture from our spicy Italian sausage recipe found here, but instead of mixing the spices directly into the meat, add them to the onion and a 28oz can of HyVee tomato sauce.  Stir well to combine, and then add a pound of ground beef.  We decided to add the beef raw, and simmer this for awhile to cook, rather than cooking the beef first, to see if we get a better flavor (we liked the result).  Finally, add between 15-20 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped.  Cover very lightly (to avoid spattering tomato sauce) and simmer for a good long while. 
     When the meat sauce is ready, either mix with some seriously al-dente pasta (we used a box of Smart Taste ziti) and layer it with the cheese mixture, or lay down a layer of pasta, a layer of meat sauce, a layer of cheese, and repeat (this is the route we took).  For cheese, we bought an 8oz (2 cup) bag of regular shredded part-skim mozzarella (2% is healthier, but when buying a bunch, the part-skim is cheaper) and an 8oz wedge of American-made Romano.  Usually we prefer the Pecorino Romano (Italian sheep's milk cheese) but HyVee didn't have that, so we got the regular stuff.  While it's definitely not as good as the Italian stuff, and I'd never use it on a cheese plate, it was just fine in the dish.  It melds quite well with the other flavors, but it doesn't have the sharp, salty/peppery bite of the pecorino and, if you can find it, the Italian-sourced stuff is much better.  We grated the Romano in a food processor for time's sake, but you can hand-grate as well, and the grate will probably be a bit better that way.  Layer into a deep dish 8x8 or 9x9 square (we did a layer of pasta, a layer of meat sauce, about 3/4 of the Romano, and 1/2 of the mozzarella, followed by more pasta, more sauce, and the remaining cheese, and it came out perfectly), and bake at 350 until bubbly if, like us, you've layered this together and chosen to bake later or, if you are putting this together while all the ingredients are hot, put on the bottom oven rack and broil until the cheese is melted and beginning to turn brown and bubbly.  Serve with crusty garlic bread and a good Italian red (or, if you prefer 'new world' reds, a briary California old-vine Zinfandel).  Enjoy!

After enjoying this, we decided that, in the future, we'll make the following changes.  Instead of the cayenne/red pepper flakes amounts in the original Italian sausage recipe, we used 1/2 tablespoon of red pepper flakes tonight.  It was good, but was a bit spicier than you'd typically think a baked pasta dish might be.  Next time, we'll probably halve that amount, and go with 1/4 tablespoon.  Also, the basil didn't come through as strongly as we expected it to here, so next time we might go with 30-40 leaves, chopped finely, instead of the 15-20 we used this time, and see where that puts us.