Entry tags:

italian, pasta

First try: Ziti with Sausage, Onions and Fennel
Something I've been pushing myself to do lately is to try new vegetables. I've always been amazed at how for years I managed to come home with exactly the same veggies all the time... Usually scallions, bok choi or nappa, sometimes spinach. Lately, I always seem to have carrots, potatoes, celery and onions on hand, but even there it feels like I'm selling myself short. The leek pasta from a few weeks ago was a forced exercise in broadening my leguminous horizons, and so's this one, another from Lidia, Italian chef extraordinaire.

Once again, it's an excuse to use Italian sausage, which I wisely purchased from the butcher this time, but now we're working with fennel. I was always a little worried about how I would take to fennel, since I rather dislike the taste of anise but instead of a mouthful of black licorice, it's more like celery with character (and no strings!). Who knew?

---

The recipe (which I halved) goes as follows:

Step 1: Over medium-high heat, brown 1 lb. Italian sausage in 1/3 c. olive oil, about 1-2 minutes.

Step 2: Push the sausage aside and cook 2 medium (sliced) onions until wilting, about 2 minutes. Stir into the meat.

Step 3: Push the meat-and-onion aside and cook 3 c. fennel (about a medium-sized bulb, cut into 2-inch matchsticks) until wilted, about 1 minute.

Step 4: Add 1/4 tsp. salt, then toast 1/2 tsp. hot pepper flakes in a cleared spot (I unwisely substituted sriracha out of necessity) for half a minute.

Step 5: Do one final clear and toast 1/2 c. tomato paste for a minute until it starts to caramelize slightly, and mix everything together.

Step 6: Add 3 cups of boiling pasta water (your pasta water is boiling by now, right?) and bring to a boil, then drop the heat to simmering.

Step 7: Now cook your 1 lb. of pasta, which should take about 6-8 minutes. I opted for a whole grain penne rigate. This will allow your sauce time to consolidate its flavour and should just soften up the fennel. Allowing the sauce to simmer too long could result in mushy fennel. Now is a good time to taste your sauce, since the pasta water will have added a fair bit of salt to it.

Step 8: Add your not-quite-al dente pasta to the pan and toss the pasta and sauce together. Cook for about 2 minutes to allow the pasta to finish cooking, then serve immediately with grated Parmegiano-Romano (I opted for P-Reggiano, actually).

---

I really liked this sauce a lot, since it's got a lovely spicy kick to it. I imagine one should adjust the amount of hot pepper based on how spicy the sausages were to begin with, though. As it happened, the sriracha wasn't a horrible substitution but I'll try pepper flakes next time. My only regret was actually the choice pasta... instead of a hearty, fuller taste I expected from whole grain pasta, it felt kind of mealy and bland. I'm thinking that may have been owing to the fact that the brand of pasta was just cruddy, though, so I won't give up on whole grain pasta just yet.

Incidentally, the cookbook mentions several times that Grana Padano cheese makes an excellent cheaper alternative to Parmagiano-Reggiano, with only very slight sacrifice in nuance. Grana Padano is apparently essentially the same cheese, only with less stringent (regional) requirements of the milk used. Hopefully I'll be able to find some next time... Although I don't exactly go through tons of Parmagiano-Reggiano, it hurts (my wallet) every time I have to buy a new block.