Pasta with Sausage Sauce

Surprise! New look for the blog! What do you think? I needed something a little darker, a little more sultry. I love the new background and the greens and browns are far more pleasing to the eye than the oranges and purples I'd been using.

Today's my last entry for awhile! I'm going on vacation and I'm looking forward to doing a lot more eating than cooking! Last night was the last meal I prepared until we get home, and I wanted something simple, something that I didn't have to go out and buy anything special.

Well, what's easier than pasta? But not just pasta - it needs a nice, chunky sauce to go along with it. I turned to my two favorite pasta books for some nice tasty sauce recipes and "Basic Italian" won out with its recipe for sausage sauce (sorry, "365 Ways to Cook Pasta", but your olive sauce is just a little too complicated for now).


PASTA AL SUGO DI SALSICCE (Pasta with Sausage Sauce), courtesy of "Basic Italian"
YOU WILL NEED:
2-3 Italian pork sausage links (about 10-12oz total)
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 (14oz) can peeled tomatoes
Salt & black pepper (or chili powder) to taste
1 lb pasta (preferably penne, rigatoni or anything long and hollow)
1 cup arugula leaves.

mise-en-place

You can use any sausage. We prefer the Johnsonville sweet Italian, but you can use spicy sausage or andouille or turkey or chicken sausage if that's what you prefer! You will also need a large skillet or sauce pan. The recipe calls for using arugula, but since I didn't want to go buy it, I'm substituting basil instead. Also, I looked ahead in the recipe and discovered I didn't need peeled tomatoes because the recipe wants you to cut them up anyway! So I used a can of diced tomatoes instead.

1. Peel onion and garlic; chop both finely. Squeeze sausage out of the skins and crumble into small bits.

Use the tip of your knife to make an incision down the length of the sausage

...and peel the skin off!

2. Heat the oil in a skillet and brown the sausage well. Add onion, garlic and fennel seeds and saute briefly.

3. Chop the tomatoes and add along with their juice to the sausage - salt to taste; spice with black pepper or chili powder. Simmer uncovered on low for 20 minutes or more. (See why using diced tomatoes is easier?)

4. In the meantime, cook pasta until al dente. Then, rinse arugula (or basil, in my case), remove any tough stems and chop rest. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper and/or chili powder. Stir in arugula (or basil).

5. Drain pasta, distribute in wide pasta bowls and top with sauce. Serve with crusty Italian bread!

I love it when I can see the steam coming up from the dish in the pictures! Mmmm.

The sauced was great, pretty zesty, but I felt like it was lacking something. The basil made it taste sweet, which is what I was totally feeling (especially after several spicy recipes!), but I wish there was more tomato in the recipe to make it more of a sauce. Maybe next time I'll add some to the saute pan. Recipes are not written in stone, remember?

I still got some packing to do, so I hope you guys enjoy these recipes until I come back! I'm planning something super special. Don't exactly know what yet, but I promise it'll be good!

Until then - eat, drink and be merry!!!