I’m not really a macaroni salad person. Its probably the goopy mayonnaise that coats most macaroni salads, the limp vegetables, the inability to taste anything except a not-that-appealing sauce. Nevertheless, when I saw this recipe on the Kitchn, I knew I had to try it. To me, barbecue sauce is pretty much the ultimate condiment. I could put barbecue sauce on almost anything that wasn’t a dessert. Lucky for me, not too long after I found this recipe, I was invited to a pot-luck, end-of-summer pool party. Perfect.

The recipe starts out by brining chicken thighs for a couple of hours. I went with the lesser amount of chicken because I split off part of the recipe to make a vegetarian option, but if I was making the full recipe I would definitely go for the full 1.5 pounds. I unfortunately didn’t snag a picture of the setup before the chicken went into the broiler, but the chicken gets basted and basically broiler grilled by putting it on a wire rack.

While the chicken was cooking, I chopped up the veggies for the salad. The red onions get soaked for 15 minutes to cut out some of their pungency since they’re raw in the salad.

The sauce is a mix of barbecue sauce and mayo, with a little bit of vinegar. I ended up going for only a 1/4 cup of mayo and more than a 1/2 cup of barbecue sauce, but you can adjust to taste.

Here’s all the chopped veggies mixed in with the cooked macaroni. This was the first recipe I cooked after my previous roommate moved out and took 90% of the pans in the house with her, so I had to cook the macaroni in a large saute pan. An interesting experience.

Once the chicken is cooked, it gets chopped up into small pieces. You can see I pretty heavily basted the chicken with barbecue sauce because you can never have too much barbecue sauce.

The chicken is added to the macaroni and the veggies.

The sauce is poured and mixed in thoroughly to coat everything. This makes a great macaroni salad; the barbecue gives it that different taste that you don’t usually get with macaroni salad, and the chicken gives it a little more heft and makes it a heartier side dish or even a meal. I think the chicken, with it’s cooked-on barbecue sauce, really makes it and adds that other dimension to the dish, but even the vegetarian version was tasty (and, to me, preferable to a standard macaroni salad). This was a great dish for a summer potluck.

Barbecue Chicken Macaroni Salad (from the Kitchn)

Ingredients

For the chicken:

• 1 quart warm water
• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 – 1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts (3-4 individual breasts)
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

For the macaroni salad:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni (about 2 cups)
• 1 red or green pepper, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced and soaked in cool water for 15 minutes
• 3-4 stalks celery, diced
• 1 tomato, seeded and chopped small
• barbecue chicken, cooked and diced as described above
• 2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
• Salt and Pepper

Directions

1. Combine the water, salt, and sugar in a shallow baking dish, stirring gently until the salt and the sugar are completely dissolved. Add the chicken to the brine. It should be completely covered by the brine. Add more warm water if necessary. Brine the chicken for 1/2 – 2 hours.
2. When you’re ready to cook, turn on the oven broiler and position an oven rack about 5 inches below the broiler. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and set a wire rack on top.
3. Remove the chicken from the brine and discard the brining liquid. Pat the chicken dry and coat each side with some of the barbecue sauce. Arrange the chicken on the rack over the baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Flip the breasts, baste them with a little more barbecue sauce, and cook for another 5-7 minutes, until they’re completely cooked through.
4. Let the chicken breasts cool and then dice them into bite-sized chunks.
5. Cook the macaroni in a large amount of salted, boiling water until it is cooked a little beyond al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.
6. In a large bowl, combine the cooked macaroni, all the vegetables, and the chicken. In a small bowl, combine the cider vinegar, 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, and 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce. Stir this into the salad mix. Taste, season with salt and plenty of black pepper, and add more mayonnaise or barbecue sauce as desired.
7. This salad will keep unrefrigerated for 4 hours, or up to a week refrigerated.

This is the first recipe I’ve tried out of my new Culinaria Italy cookbook. I really like the Culinaria series (I own Culinaria Greece as well) because they are packed with information and great pictures of the food and region, and contain tons of information about the ingredients and the food itself, not just recipes. The book gives the english name of this recipe to be “pasta with pork ragout,” and as given in the recipe this is true, as it originally calls for gnocchetti, not gnocchi, as the base. Gnocchetti are made of semolina, not potatoes like gnocchi, and are often dried. Not knowing the difference when I was buying ingredients for this dish, I substituted gnocchi, which worked out fine.

The dish starts out with a vegetable base: leeks, carrots, celery, parsley, and I added some green pepper, though it wasn’t in the original recipe. These are sautéed lightly in olive oil, but they don’t need to be cooked very thoroughly, as they will spend plenty of time in the pan.

In go the pork chunks, which are browned. Again, they don’t need to get cooked through, just mostly through. In retrospect I probably should have turned the heat up higher and given them a good sear to create some real browning on the outside, but by the time I thought of doing it they were already in this state.

After the pork is browned, chopped tomatoes and some balsamic vinegar go in. Actually, the original recipe called for a “1/2 glass red wine”, but having no red wine open nor the chance to visit a liquor store to get some, I used good balsamic vinegar instead. It probably changed the character of the dish quite a bit from the original, but the addition of vinegar here gave what basically would have been a tomato sauce a different kick that turned out to be quite delicious.

After cooking down for an hour, covered, the ragout looks ready to go on your pasta of choice. Nicely, most of the vegetables, including the tomato, had held up well and resulted in a chunky sauce.

The ragout worked well with the gnocchi. It’s not particularly “saucy”, but there was definitely enough to coat everything and provide a base for the meat and vegetables. I think this would work well with other meats like beef or chicken, or even sausage, and it was a welcome twist on our classic pasta and vegetable meat sauce.

Gnocchi al Sugo di Maiale – Gnocchi with Pork Ragout (adapted from Culinaria Italy)

Ingredients

• 2 medium-sized carrots, chopped
• 1 leek, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 small green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 handful of fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 pound pork, cut into cubes
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 4 medium tomatoes, chopped
• salt and pepper
• 1 pound gnocchi or gnocchetti, cooked

Directions

1. Sauté the vegetables and parsley for a couple of minutes in olive oil over medium heat.
2. Increase the heat to medium-high and add the pork, browning all sides.
3. Add the tomatoes, vinegar and salt and pepper and reduce the heat to low. Stir well and cover. Let simmer for 1 hour.
4. Serve over gnocchi, gnocchetti or your favorite pasta.

This is a dish that I make fairly often. I don’t really remember when I started putting together my own pasta sauce, but I won’t go back to the jarred stuff now. Since I use canned tomatoes my sauce isn’t entirely built from the ground up, but they save time in the process, which makes this a great week night dinner.

It starts, like most things, with a large chopped onion and two or three minced garlic cloves.

Saute them in olive oil in a LARGE skillet (seriously, you will need it to fit all the stuff that goes into this) over medium high heat until the garlic is nicely browned and the onions start to soften.

I usually throw in some kind of meat; many times it’s Trader Joe’s chicken sausage, which is oh-so-tasty. But occasionally I’ll forget or purposefully make this with vegetables only, and it’s just as filling and good.

The TJ’s sausages pre-cooked, but I throw them in the pan next to brown them.

The beauty of this recipe is you can throw in any veggies you feel like. I always put a green pepper in, and tonight I added green beans as well. Carrots, broccoli, snow peas… they all work great.

I throw the veggies in the pan to brown a bit, but not for long. They’ll get plenty cooked later as the sauce comes together. If you wanted them to be crisper, you could add them later in the process, but I usually throw them in here.

If I have a lot of time, I’ll go for fresh tomatoes, but if, like usual, I’m hungry and impatient, a can of stewed tomatoes adds larger chunks of tomatoes to the sauce without the work.

A large (28-oz) can of crushed tomatoes makes up the bulk of the sauce. I’ve spent some time trying out different brands of crushed tomatoes, looking for one that is more than just tomato sauce, and my favorite brand is Rienzi. It has substantial chunks of tomatoes mixed in with the more thoroughly crushed substrate. A variety of spices also go in at this point. I usually use basil, oregano, a bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and this time I threw in some sage and paprika.

After simmering, covered, for about 15 minutes, then another 5-10 minutes uncovered to cook off some of the excess liquid, the sauce is ready to serve over your favorite pasta. I like rotini because the spirals hold onto the sauce well.

I’m providing a recipe for this, though it is really a fluid dish that easily accommodates a lot of variants.

Chunky Veggie Pasta Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 lb sausage, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• a variety of vegetables, chopped
• 1 14.5 oz can of stewed tomatoes
• 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon each oregano, basil, any other spices you would like
• salt and pepper
• 1 lb pasta

Directions

1. Heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until brown and soft.
2. Add sausage; saute until browned and mostly cooked through if using raw meat.
3. Add the rest of the vegetables and cook a few minutes.
4. Stir in canned tomatoes, including all of their liquids. Add the spices, salt and pepper and make sure everything is well combined.
5. Simmer for 15 minutes, covered, then remove the cover and simmer for another 5-10 minutes or most of the liquids have cooked off and the sauce has reached the desired consistency.
6. Serve over pasta of your choice, with fresh grated parmesan on top.