One Posted Recipe Deserves Another
A friend of mine, a fellow foodie, posted a recipe today that I just have to try. She is more into Thai and Asian food than I am but it looked like a great way to do eggs. Since she posted a recipe and since I am bored and experimenting anyway tonight I decided to post the recipe that I trying tonight.
Hey don't make fun of me, cooking is keeping me on the straight and narrow. Otherwise I might join a street gang like the Jets and then you would be forced to watch me sing and dance in a broadway show. None of us want that now do we?
Anyway I was flipping through September's "Food and Wine Magazine" and this caught my eye; It is simple and fast.
Pasta with Sasuage, Basil and Mustard
- 1 lb penne or medium shells or orecchiette pasta
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1.5 lbs of hot italian sausages (casings removed, meat crumbled)
- 3/4 cup of dry white wine (I recommend a Sauvignon Blanc)
- 3/4 cup of heavy cream
- 3 tbsp grainy mustard (a decent mustard is key to this dish)
- Pinch of crushed red pepper (although I used like a 1/2 tsp of Chipolte sauce)
- 1 cup thinly slice basil (or 1/2 cup of slice basil & 1/2 cup slice mache lettuce)
As you might be able to tell I sort of modified the dish as I went. Let me stress this cooking is not an exact science and basically you just need to constantly taste it as you go. If it is not tangy enough or lacking in certain flavor add a little bit more of that ingredient until you get the taste you like.
I didn't have red pepper on me so I used my old standby instead, a spicy Chipolte sauce made by Terrapin Ridge.
- Take the sausage out of casing and crumble; it is difficult so don't worry about thoroughly crumbling it. As you cook the sausage it is easier to crumble by mashing it with a wooden spoon while you cook.
- Chiffonade the basil and lettuce. This is just a fancy term which means roll up the basil and lettuce like you were rolling a cigarette and then slice it horizontally repeatedly. You will get a nice chiffonade from this. The French call this chiffonading because, well it sounds better than slicing a cigarette made of lettuce repeatedly.
For some reason that didn't sound appealing to the French so I think they looked at some runway model in Chiffon and went ... oooh-huuuuh-haaaa .. eureka we will call it Chiffonading! After all everyone likes a woman in Chiffon. Oui, Oui!
- Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling water until al dente (or however you like your pasta); drain.
- Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet. Add the sausage meat and brown over moderately high heat. Add the wine and simmer until reduced by half. Add the cream, mustard and red pepper and simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the pasta, basil and mix it up until all the pasta is coated with the sauce.
- Plate the pasta and then take a little more of the basil / lettuce chiffonade and sprinkle it over the pasta and serve. Yes, yes this is more for decoration than anything else.
All told the dish takes about 10 minutes of prep (cook pasta, crumble up sausage, and slice the basil and lettuce) and roughly 20 minutes total to make. Oh, and it also makes 4 good size servings, which is why I cut the recipe in half tonight. Otherwise I would be eating pasta for the next several days and since I am from New England, not Italy, this would not be a good thing. A New Englander doing an Italian accept bad, believe me you don't want to hear why; Just trust me. So unless you are Italian (and let me say good for you if you are) don't make enough pasta to survive the fallout of a nuclear winter.
Now as I said modify the recipe as you like based on your taste. I recommend starting with 1 tablespoon of mustard and just a little red pepper or chipolte sauce. Stir that into the sauce and boil it down a bit, then taste. Remember it is easier to add things in if it is not to your taste. Putting all of the mustard in at once and red pepper / chipolte .. well once in you can't take it out. Only way really to fix it would be to add more cream to dilute it. So instead start with little and then mix in more as you taste it until you get a flavor you like. This is really more a cream sauce with a slight chipolte mustard taste (although if you like you can go for a much richer chipolte taste .. all up to you).
Also the recipe says to simmer for 2 minutes. I think I did it for five since I like a thicker sauce. The thickness of the sauce is really up to you. the less simmering the more watery it will be. The more simmering the thicker it will be. Once again it is up to your personal taste.