Arriba, Arriba, Andale, Andouille!

Cajun and Mexican cuisine have each earned reputations for spicy deliciousness, so when my sister combined some leftover refried beans and rice from our Mexican dinner with hot sausage, spinach and some secret ingredients, it's not surprising that it turned out to be fantastic, tasting similar to jambalaya or gumbo.  The next day when I scooped some of Darlene's Cajun fusion stew into a tortilla, it was so good that I contemplated opening a chain of "Cajun Eat Dos" fast food restaurants.

Teddy, Darlene and Emma in Montana.

While that bright idea soon faded, when Julie and I arrived home from Montana, we found son Jay had left some Trader Joe's Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausage in the refrigerator.  He had planned to barbecue it on the 4th of July, when he came over to view the Redondo Beach fireworks from our condo, but the absence of a barbecue forced him to abort that idea.

Cooking over open fire has been instinctive behavior for men since Fred Flintstone was a boy, but as I have lamented in the past, we don't have room for an outdoor grill alongside our reclining veranda seats at our condo in Redondo.

Thus faced with the dilemma of how to eat hot sausages without flames to grill them over, I read the  label, and among the choices was to bake them for 14 minutes.

Recognizing my preference for well-done, I decided to cook them in my convection oven at 375 degrees for 18 minutes, which is about the equivalent of a standard oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  After setting the oven to pre-heat, I lined a small casserole dish with Reynolds Non-Stick Pan Lining Paper, which by now you should've noted is a key for making many recipes into Quick-Clean Cuisine.  I quickly opened the four pack of sausages and put them into the lined dish.

I didn't wait for the oven to finish pre-heating before putting the dish in the oven, so I could immediately go upstairs to work on my computer until I heard the oven chime marking the end of the designated time.  By the way, if you don't use timers for cooking, you are making it unnecessarily difficult.

Soon, I heard the chime and headed down to find the sausages had browned a bit, with a slot opening almost as if they had been grilled.  I ate one with barbecue sauce and one with mustard, and both ways were great, either with or without bread. 

If I had some red beans and rice or leftover Mexican side dishes around, I might have tried to make a variation of Darlene's concoction, but for today, just know that baked sausages taste surprisingly great, if you cook them about a third longer than recommended by the manufacturer.  Clean up is as simple as throwing away the pan liner and quickly rinsing the casserole dish after it has cooled.