Creamy Sausage, Spinach and Morels Over Polenta

I still had half of the morels left from our farmers market trip last weekend & wanted to create a dish to show them off. I read that they are very suited to a cream sauce so my original idea was to make a cream sauce with spinach & the morels & serve that over polenta. Matt thought that sounded good but he wanted to add some of our homemade Italian sausage.

The mushroom flavor really was great in this dish, I only wish I had had more of them to add to it. This dish is super creamy & rich but I figure adding spinach to it makes it healthy, right? I thought the cream sauce was a little bland at first but the addition of the sherry took care of that.

Creamy Sausage, Spinach & Morels Over Polenta

1 T olive oil
2 shallots, peeled & chopped
8 oz bulk Italian sausage
2 T all-purpose flour
1 c cream (plus more if needed)
1 T sherry
salt & pepper
1 -2 c spinach
1/2 T butter
8 morels, halved (if you don't have fresh morels use another mushroom of your choice)
6 T instant polenta

In a large skillet heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the shallots & sausage. Sauté until the sausage is cooked through. Turn heat down to medium-low. Sprinkle the flour over the sausage and cook while stirring for 1 minute. Stir in the cream & sherry. Bring to a simmer while stirring & cook until slightly thickened. If it gets too thick add a little more cream or milk. Season with salt & pepper. Stir in the spinach & let wilt. Keep warm over low heat while cooking the rest of the meal.

Melt the butter in a small skillet over medium heat. Add the morels. Sauté until tender & starting to brown. Set aside.

Bring 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Turn the heat down & stir in the polenta. Stir until the polenta is thick & creamy 3 -5 minutes. Season with salt.

Divide the polenta between two shallow bowls. Top with the sausage & spinach sauce. Lay mushrooms on top.

Serves 2

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted.
© 2007-2009 Kathy Lewinski