Flavourful pasta with sausage and fennel

Spanishchef.net recommends these products

Flavourful pasta with sausage and fennel

Pasta is a dish inexorably associated with Italy, particularly the south.

While I have had the pleasure to travel to various parts of Italy, nowhere is pasta embraced with more fervor than on the island of Sicily.

My first clue that Sicilians are serious pasta eaters was my first trip into a supermarket. Entire aisles are devoted to this product, in every shape you can imagine.

During two separate trips, I watched large plates of steaming pasta being passed through tiny windows in alleyways to feed laborers for lunch. I enjoyed this staple, married with simple but flavourful vegetable sauces and also had delicate dishes where it was served with perfectly cooked seafood. And of course there is couscous… but that’s another column.

The following recipe is my rendition of a dish I enjoyed in Taormina in May. Fresh fennel is an ingredient that is part of the Sicilian repertoire. Wild fennel, which is particularly tasty, is also widely available.

In this pasta dish, fennel is combined with sausage meat and a short pasta of choice.

Pasta with Sausage and Fennel

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. (25 ml) olive oil

1 cooking onion, peeled and sliced very thin

1 small head of fennel

1 tsp. (5 ml) fennel seeds

2 hot Italian sausage, casings removed

2 garlic Italian sausage, casings removed

1 c. (250 ml) chicken stock

2 tbsp. (25 ml) tomato paste

1 lb. (500 g) short pasta

1/2 c. (125 ml) grated Romano cheese

Directions:

1. In a sauté pan, or wok, heat the olive oil over medium heat.

2. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently until the onion is a light caramel color.

3. While the onion is cooking, remove the delicate fronds of the fennel and set aside. Cut the bulb in half, remove the core, and dice finely.

4. Add the fennel seeds and fennel to the onion and continue to cook, stirring frequently for about 5 minutes.

5. Crumble the sausage meat into the pan, and cook until no longer pink. Add the chicken stock and tomato paste and reduce heat to a gentle simmer.

6. While the sausage is cooking, bring a large pot of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, add 2 tbsp. (25 ml) salt. Add the pasta and cook until just al dente.

7. When the pasta is ready, drain well and add to the sauce. Add the chopped fennel fronds. Toss well.

8. Add half of the Romano cheese and combine. Transfer to a large shallow pasta bowl. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and serve.

(Serves 6)

If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest.

Get the best website builder available anywhere –SBI! Lick here for more information

Return from pasta to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites: