Hungry in Hoboken

Living in Hoboken you have the opportunity for a variety of take-out and though it is lovely to tuck into some Thai food once in a while, it is also nice to sit down to a nice home cooked meal.

Welcome to Hungry in Hoboken a new website that will help those of us out there that need a little inspiration when it comes to making dinner. This website is for the stay-at-home-mom (sahm), the working mom (wohm) and the darling husbands (dh) out there who everyday contemplate that simple question: “what’s for dinner?”

I’m often asked by my friends how I stay organized and creative when it comes to putting daily meals on the table. Organization is the key, and here is where this website comes in. I’ll do the organizing for you; tell you what you need to buy and what you need to do in order to assemble dinner any night you want. And I’ll provide the creative aspect too, giving you access to my sources for great meals that are hearty, often kid-friendly (but a warning they may not always be) and tasty.

One of my true pleasures in life is to cook for other people, so on occasion I will also give you entire menus for dinner parties that I've had or will be having. You can be confident that everything I post here will be delicious, creative and wonderful.

So without further ado, let’s get started!

So tonight’s meal is actually inspired by the weather in Hoboken today. It is grey and wet and rainy today. The original idea for this recipe came to me from a magazine recipe many years ago. I think it was Real Simple magazine, which by the way I think should be named Real Redundant; they seem to have the same thing in there every month. Anyway, the original recipe featured eggs but I’ve cut them out completely. Here goes:

Twice-Baked Potatoes with Chicken Sausage

Serves 4
Baking Time: 1 hour (for potato) 20 mins (for stuffed potato)

2 Idaho baking potatoes cleaned and scrubbed

2 -3 chicken sausages (the pre-cooked variety that usually comes in flavors like sun-dried tomato, I like the artichoke flavor) My dh loves the chicken sausage so I usually use 3.

2 Tbsp sour cream

1 Tbsp butter

2 scallions cut into pieces

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Poke the potatoes with holes and set them in an oven set at 400 and let them bake until they yield to a knife, about an hour. You can hurry the potatoes along and microwave them for about 10 minutes to speed up this process, but I find the microwave makes the potato a bit mealy so I stick to the oven. I find it really isn't a hardship to chuck them in there around 5 pm and then forget about them until closer to 6.

When the potatoes are close to being done cut up the sausage into one-inch sized chunks and place them in a pre-heated skillet with a little dab of olive oil to brown them nicely. This should take about 5 minutes.

Take the potatoes out of the oven when they are ready and leave the oven turned on. Cut the potatoes in half length-wise and scoop out the steaming insides into a bowl. Place the shells on a cookie sheet and sprinkle the naked insides with a little salt and pepper. Into the bowl with the hot potato flesh add the sour cream and butter and mash away. Take a taste test at this point and add salt and pepper to your liking. At this point I use a hand held mixer and whip the potatoes up into a fluffy pile, but you don’t need to do this as really a fork or potato masher will do the job nicely.

After you have the mashed potatoes done add the scallions and the chicken sausage and about 4 Tbsp of the cheese. Mix all up and divide the mixture evenly between the four shells. Top the mounds with the rest of the cheese and place back in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until the cheese is golden.

I serve one half per person of this dish along with a tossed salad. Enjoy!