Cold Spicy Pasta

 A use for small amounts of leftover pasta & tomato sauce, for lovers of spicy food. This is a super-simple "recipe" that doesn't involve any cooking or reheating.

Ingredients:

• Snack-sized amounts of cold leftover pasta & tomato sauce
• Hot sauce
• Grated Parmesan cheese
• (optional) A pinch of coarse salt
• (optional) Extra virgin olive oil

Procedure:

• Do not heat any ingredients. This is meant to be served cold.
• Mix together the tomato sauce and a bit more hot sauce than you would normally use.
• Mix together the pasta, EVOO, salt, and a bit more cheese than you would normally use.
• Mix the pasta and sauce together.
• Eat.

Explanations:

Use a little extra hot sauce, salt, and cheese because cold ingredients don't activate the taste buds as strongly as warm ingredients, so the dish might taste bland without.

The EVOO makes the pasta less sticky. Also, it tastes good mixed with Parmesan cheese.

Stir the ingredients separately to avoid pockets of hot sauce and clumps of cheese.

Stir the cheese with the pasta, rather than with the sauce, to give the noodles extra texture for the sauce to stick to.

Vegetarian sausage gravy

Ingredients:
1/2 lb	Vegetarian sausage (I use MorningStar Farms' 6-pack)
3 tbsp	Butter
2 tbsp	Flour
2 cups	Milk (skim works well; higher fat will thicken more and require more for thinning)
1/2 tbsp	Rubbed sage
3/4 tsp	Savory (optional)
(to taste)	MSG, salt, black pepper

Procedure:

Thaw the sausage patties if they are frozen. For MorningStar Farms, I microwave for 2-3 minutes on high with all six patties on one plate.

Shred the sausage patties. I use two forks, one to anchor a patty and the other to pull off chunks. It should look like cooked ground beef when finished, but a little chunkier.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Add the sausage and cook on medium heat, stirring regularly, for 5-10 minutes. The sausage should take on a slightly darker color, and the granules will look a little smaller.

Sprinkle the flour on top, one tablespoon at a time, stirring until it is not really visible any more. This is also a good time to mix in some black pepper; I usually go with about a dozen turns of my grinder.

Add the milk and mix until the sausage is evenly distributed. Add the sage. Turn the heat up to high and keep stirring until the milk begins to boil. The gravy should thicken very quickly at this point, so turn the heat down to medium-low until the desired thickness is reached. Add the rest of the seasonings to taste. I usually use about a half teaspoon each of MSG and kosher salt, and sometimes a little more black pepper.

If the gravy gets too thick, stir in more milk to thin it to your liking. It will tend to thicken a bit as it cools, so aim for a little thinner than you want it to be on the plate.

This recipe works great for sausage gravy and biscuits (or, as my wife and I tend to say, "sausage biscuits and gravy"). It should cover 4-6 biscuits, or all 8 of a Pillsbury can if you use enough milk.