Essentially Cooking

As cooked by Laurie This is one of our favorite winter soups.  Laurie has made it a lot.  The recipe is actually a Weight Watchers recipe.  It is hard for me to believe that something with sausage in it, and would taste so good, would be a weight watchers recipe, but so be it. The combination of the sausage and the butternut squash is what makes it so very tasty in my book.  The broth is so yummy. You will see in the recipe instructions at the bottom of the post that Laurie has added carrots and spinach to the original recipe.  Plus she has an idea for making it a bit thicker.  Both of us like thick soup, rather than just broth with a few food items floating around in it. Photos below are random grab shots, in order: Saute chopped onions Remove casing from sausage Sausage added to onions Sausage sauteed in onions Butternut Squash These are the beans we had in the pantry.  Recipe calls for 19 oun...

As cooked by Laurie Sometimes you just need some comfort food.  In this case it was a rainy, dreary, and cold spring day and Laurie felt like soup.  What a great variation this dish is on the classic comfort food, Shepherd’s Pie.  But in this case the ingredients are magnificently turned into stew. The ingredients are similar; but what looks like pasta is not.  It’s gnocchi, a thick soft dough dumpling which in this case is made with potato.   The photos below show a few of the steps. Cook the ground beef and/or ground lamb Sautee carrots and onions Add mushrooms Sprinkle flour into the mixture and cook Add back the meat.  Add chicken broth. Add gnocchi As served for dinner Shepherd's Stew with Dumplings What you need: 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter 1 pound ground lamb or beef Kosher salt Black pepper, freshly ground 2 medium carrots, cut into thin coins 1 medium onion, diced ...