Penne con Salsiccia (or Sausage Pasta)

Sausage Pasta 3

So I promised you easy, everyday family food and then give you shortbread.  This is to make up for it.  For those days when I have so much on my to do list I can’t think straight and whilst busy writing and testing a couple of recipes I don’t actually have anything for supper.  For those days you need emergency food that can be conjured up from whatever you might keep in your fridge or larder.

Any day of the week my daughter would choose pasta for tea.  Ideally a Bolognese type ragu or this sausage pasta.  My son however doesn’t like pasta or sausages…. Quite a conundrum and this tends to remain for days when he is out.  I must stress though that of all the people, child or adult, who have tried this, he is the only one who doesn’t like it!

Sausage Pasta_

I love this though and whenever I cook it for my daughter I hover greedily and wish I had thought of it for our supper.  Speedy and simple, the sauce takes no more time to make than the pasta does to cook.  Add as much or as little chilli as you like depending on your diners.  I struggle to find spicy, Italian sausages around here so add heat with some dried chilli flakes whose  smoky flavour is perfect here.  Should you be able to find some genuine salsiccia (you lucky thing) the taste a bit once it is cooked before adding chilli in case it is not required.

This is supremely comforting, quick, cheap and easy – what more could you want?

Sausage Pasta

I might add the some leaf spinach along with the cream and water if this is for our dinner letting it wilt in the heat of the sausage sauce.  My daughter would be horrified if I did this to her favourite supper so I tend to leave the spinach out for her but sometimes I add some peas…..

1 tablespoon oil

6 good sausages, skin removed

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Pinch of chilli flakes (see above)

1 tablespoon cream

1/2 a small bunch of parsley, chopped

150g short pasta, I use penne but it is up to you

Parmesan to serve

Cook the pasta as per the packet instructions.   Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the sausage, breaking it up as much as you can.  When it is starting to look a little brown and crisping around the edges add the garlic and chilli.  Cook for a few more minutes to lose the rawness in the garlic and then add the cream and 3 tablespoons of water out of the pasta pan.   When the pasta is cooked drain then add to the pan with the sausage, give it all a good mix, taste and see what seasoning it needs then sprinkle over the parsley and serve with lots of grated parmesan.  Enough for 2 but easily doubled or tripled.

Sausage Pasta 2

Firecracker Red Cabbage and Sausages

Firecracker hot dog

It took me a while to come around to Guy Fawkes night as a child.  I found the whole Guy business both slightly mad and macabre.  Firstly because they always looked like a giant pair of tights stuffed with old clothes tied with baler twine and sporting a huge hat over the grinning face.  Rarely worth a penny I thought.  Macabre because I didn’t really like the idea of burning anyone although I did realise it was purely symbolic.  Childish anxieties I guess.

What would cheer me up however was the promise of something good to eat whilst standing around an enormous bonfire.  I can see it now on our village green, almost two storeys high, a huge beast of a fire shooting sparks into the night sky and belting out heat.  There was usually the promise of a toffee apple, good for nibbling the toffee off only to be left with a rather sticky green apple on a wobbly stick.  Or cinder toffee, crunchy, splintering and sticking your teeth together.  Always on offer were hot dogs, proper sausages rather than frankfurters with a good squirt of ketchup which inevitably found its way onto your woolly gloves.

Sadly our fireworks were rained off  this week but if they hadn’t been this is what we would have been eating as a relish with our hot dogs.   Sweet, tangy and with a good kick of chilli it is delicious in a bun with a good banger on top.   It would be just as at home served on the side with some sausages or perhaps with roast pork or maybe a ham.   Ideas, ideas….

Firecracker cabbage

Firecracker Red Cabbage

As I was making this I cast an eye over a jar of chilli jelly which you could very easily use in place of the redcurrant jelly and chilli flakes – the reason I didn’t was because they vary so much in their heat so difficult to suggest how much to use.   You could give it a try and taste as you go.  This amount of chilli means my children are happy with it, add more if you want.

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1/2 red cabbage, quite finely chopped

Good pinch of salt

1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes

2 tablespoons redcurrant jelly

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Heat the oil in a large pan, add the onion and stir.  Add the red cabbage and give it a good stir and then add the remaining ingredients.  Cook gently for half an hour with a lid on and half an hour with the lid off to allow the liquid to bubble down to a syrup which will coat the cabbage.  Taste, it might need a little more salt or a spritz of balsamic.   Serve with sausages in buns or on plates, enough for 4.