HOT Italian Sausage Pasta

Mi piace davvero.

It's time to get down on some sausage pasta. 


What you will need

• Hot Italian sausage
• 1 large onion
• 8 Roma tomatoes
• 1 can tomato paste
• Parmigano / Pecorino
• Crushed red pepper
• Olive oil 2 tbsp
• Red wine  
• Fresh or dry oregano

So I like to start off by grilling up the sausage and getting some lines on it. You can do this in a pan or cast iron skillet if you have to.

This will really just help firm up the sausage so that you have pieces instead of ground pork in the pasta. If you prefer remove the casing and just saute in the pan for a ground pork pasta.

Anyway after these are done cut them in half lengthwise and cut little half moons. Like so.

Ok, so now that your hands are all greasy pour a couple glugs of olive oil into a dutch oven and heat on high. When it starts to get nice and hot, right before it begins smoking, add the pork and sizzle and stir. Don't worry if some of the stuff gets stuck to the bottom of the pan we'll get it off later.

Once everything is nice and browned add 2 tbsp red pepper plakes and stir for 30 seconds then add
1 roughly chopped onion to the mix.


When the onion starts to brown add 1 cup red table wine. Really whatever you're drinking is fine. What? Then go open a bottle and pour yourself a glass. Anyway at this point you can use a wooden spoon to scrape all of the stuff off the bottom of the pan.

Let that go for a while till 60% or so boils off.

Now you can add your  roughly chopped tomatoes. And any tomato parts you might have left over from pasta salad.

let them go for about 10 minutes and add 1 can of tomato paste. I prefer the organic kind because it tastes better. I hope that ad
is for a case... it's like $1 at Publix. Oh it's for 24. That's not too bad.



Well, we're almost there.
Now feel free to turn down the heat and add some oregano from the garden. Or from the garden from last year in my case.

Let the stuff simmer.

Now go ahead and boil up some rotini pasta. You want to subtract about 2 minutes from the cooking time on the box because we are going to finish it in the sauce and let the noodles soak up all the goodness instead of just water.

If the sauce gets too dry just add a scoop of pasta water. When your noodles are almost aldente strain but reserve some of the pasta water just in case. place the noodles in the pot, stir to coat evenly and put a lid on it! Right. 2 minutes later and check for doneness. If it tastes good go with it. If not salt and pepper to your taste.

Top with cheese and some fresh parsley.

Yum.

Springtime Vegetable Confetti Pasta Salad

Mirror mirror on the wall, what is the freshest pasta salad of all.

This salad is really tasty and has more veggies than pasta when you finish so maybe this is a veggie salad with some pasta. All of the veggies that I list are recommended but as always if you don't like something or thin of something else that you want to add, you are the boss in your kitchen.


You will need
Veggies

• Carrots
• Celery
• Vidalia onion
• Broccoli stalks
• Green/Red pepper
• Roma tomatoes
• Fresh corn

For the rest

• Ditalini Pasta
• Mayo
• Plain Yogurt
• Red wine vinegar
• Salt / Pepper

 So this recipe really lets you work on your knife skills. In other words, be prepared to chop some major veggies. After you wash every thing and peel what's appropriate. Toss your broccoli stalks in a steamer and let them go for 5-7 minutes.


They need to be peeled around the outside to avoid any really tough bits.

Besides cooking the pasta, that is the only other thing you will need to cook for this recipe. The rest is raw. (Raw=Healthier)


So cut up all your veggies the same size as the pasta that you are using so that every thing will be farily consistent throughout. I use Barilla Ditalini because it is well... perfect for this salad. You can boil the pasta whenever you want, keep it nice and aldente would you? Rinse in cold water when it's done. Set aside.

So a couple of cups of each veggie is going to do you right for this recipe. There is no perfect ratio or anything. Cut more of what you like it will start to look like fun stuff in no time.

For the tomatoes, seed them with a spoon so you are only cutting up the outer flesh.


This will keep the pasta from getting soupy.  This will also give you some tomato ammunition for any pasta sauce that you want to make in the future. (foreshadowing?!!)

So now that we have all our veggies cut and the pasta ready to be thrown in.

I really just wanted to get to these pictures.

Looks pretty good to me.So all you need to do now is dress it. How about 2/3 cup mayo 2/3 cups yougurt and 1/3 cup red wine vinegar. 2 tbsp pepper and 2 tbsp salt. Himalayan sea salt is the shiznit but sea salt or kosher salt will work just fine. Mix that all up and add it to the salad. And there you go.

Yum.

I entered this side dish in the side-dish showdown on  Cinnamon and Spice