Tag: italian recipe

Chilli garlic tomato pappardelle with dressed mozzarella with parm

Garlic, Chilli Tomatoey Pappardelle With Dressed Mozzarella

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We’re back, and it’s another pasta recipe (surprise surprise). Can you tell pasta’s my favourite food? This one is a super tomatoey, garlicky and punchy dish. Think arich, garlic, chilli and tomato sauce over pappardelle with a super tasty and fresh seasoned mozzarella on top. This another quick one, perfect for a weekday dinner. The creamy mozzarella really balances out that rich tomato and mild heat from the chilli. If you can get it, I’d recommend going for a high quality buffalo mozzarella for this dish. The mozzarella is served raw so we’re really after high quality ingredients as there’s no hiding. I’m gonna give you fair warning, this is a very garlicky dish (cooked in the sauce and raw with the mozzarella) so I don’t recommend eating this right before a social gathering, unless you’re all eating it.

Garlic, Chilli Tomatoey Pappardelle With Dressed Mozzarella

Sevres 2 | 30-40 mins cook + Prep

Ingredients

1 ball good quality buffalo mozzarella

4 cloves garlic, 1 clove minced and the rest thinly sliced

2 red chillis, deseeded and thinly sliced

Large handful basil minced

Large handful parsley minced

1tsp red wine vinegar

A few good glugs of good quality extra virgin olive oil

1 tin plum tomatoes

180g dried pappardelle

2-3tbsp grated parm + more to serve

Method

  1. Tear the mozzarella into bitesize chunks and place in a bowl. Add the minced garlic, 1/4 of the chilli, a small handful of parsley & basil, red wine vinegar and a good few glugs of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, stir, cover and chill in the fridge until ready to eat. This can be done a few hours ahead
  2. Heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil in a medium sauce pan over medium/high heat. Add the sliced garlic and the rest of the chilli. Cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic just begins to turn golden and is fragrant (should take around 5 mins, depending on your hob).
  3. Add the tomatoes, and about 1/2 tin of water. Squish the tomatoes with a spoon. Bring this to a boil then lower the temperature and simmer for 20-30 mins until the sauce has thickened.
  4. Add in the rest of the parsley & basil, and the grated parm. Season to taste with salt & pepper.
  5. Cook the pappardelle in heavily salted pasta water until al dente. Reserve a mug of pasta water towards the end of the cooking time. Combine the pasta & sauce, and add some pasta water to reach your desired sauce consistency.
  6. Serve the pasta with the torn mozzarella on top & more parm if you like!
Creamy Sausage Ragu

Creamy White Sausage Ragu

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For me there is no better way to spend a Sunday than making a ragu. There is something so relaxing and therapeutic about focussing your whole mind on cooking for a few hours. Every step requires so much care and attention from chopping all the veggies perfectly to simmering it all down. All that time and effort is immediately made worth it when you taste the first bite and you realise you’ve made something really special. Making a ragu such a rewarding experience in so many ways – the process of cooking it and the amazing meal you get at the end. Anyway, enough of my love letter to ragus – lets talk about this sauce.

This sauce is the culmination of all my ragu-related learnings over the years from the Italian cooking heroes Anna Del Conte & Marcella Hazan. I always like to have a ragu in my freezer as it makes for such an easy but still tasty and high quality dinner. So I usually have a few boxes of ADC or Marcella bolognese, and now I’m adding this white ragu as a freezer staple (high praise as I only have a half freezer & 1 of the drawers is unusable from constantly freezing shut). It’s a much richer and creamy version of its tomatoey conterpart, and there is space for both in my heart. The sauce is SO flavourful from the love and time that goes into cooking it – I really can’t recommend it enough!

Creamy White Sausage Ragu

Serves 4-8 (depending on how saucy you like pasta – see notes) | 2.5-3.5 hours prep + simmer time

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic

25g butter

1tbsp olive oil

1 white onion

1 bulb fennel

454g sausage meat (or sausages removed from their casing)

3 tsp fennel seeds toasted & crushed (or fennel pollen)

2 tsp dried thyme

2 tsp dried oregano

150ml milk

150ml dry white wine

200ml chicken stock

150ml cream

Large handful of parsley, finely chopped

25g grated parmesan

Method

  1. Prep the veggies: peel and crush the garlic with the side of a knife; finely dice the onion; quarter the fennel, remove the core and finely slice.
  2. In a casserole dish/dutch oven, heat the butter and oil over medium/low heat. Add the garlic and cook until golden. Remove the garlic and set aside.
  3. Add the onions and cook until starting to soften and turn translucent. Add the fennel and cook until slightly softened – 10-15 mins.
  4. While the veggies are cooking, combine the sausage meat with the fennel, thyme, oregano and salt & pepper.
  5. Once the veggies are cooked, turn the heat up to high and pushed the vegetables to the side of the pan and add the sausage meat – this ensures the meat browns rather than stews. Leave the to cook undisturbed for a minute or two until brown, flip the meat and repeat on the other side. Leaving the meat like this allows it to brown & form chunks, this adds so much flavour and means it won’t completely break down in cooking.
  6. Use a spatula to break the sausage meat in large chunks and stir through the vegetables. Cook, stirring occasionally until the meat is cooked through with lots of brown/caramelised pieces. A good fond will start to form (this is the brown stuff sticking to the bottom of the pan) – don’t be afraid! This will be a source of a lot of flavour.
  7. Once the sausage is ready, add the milk, bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the milk has almost completely disappeared, through this step scrape the bottom of the pan to release the tasty tasty fond. Marcella says to add the milk before the wine as it protects the meat from the acid of the wine, and I trust that woman with my life. Add the wine and again reduce until all the liquid is almost gone.
  8. Add the stock, turn the heat as low as it’ll go and place the lid on the pan slightly askew. Leave this to simmer for 30-45 mins. Add the cream and simmer for a further 45-60 mins.
  9. Once cooked, take off the heat stir through the parsley and parmesan. Serve with your favourite pasta and more parm and parsley on top.

Notes: you’ll notice the service size is quite a big range. This is because the way Italians & English have their pasta is very different. The english way is to add a lot of sauce, but the Italian way is to be much more sparing with sauce. I lean towards the Italian way, especially with this sauce – it’s so flavourful so a little goes a long way. When I have this dish I usually combine the sauce with a little pasta water to thin it out slightly to cover all the pasta.