Tag: italian sausage

Cheesy, Tomatoey Sausage Pasta Bake

Cheesy, Tomatoey, Italian Sausage Pasta Bake

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This is one of my go to comfort, hangover dishes. We’re talking cheesy carbs with a real punch of herby, tomatoey flavour. This dish was inspired by one of my fave Chrissy Tiegen recipes – her pasta alla norma. I really liked what she called ‘mozzarella bombs’ – her dish and this one have chunks of mozzarella studded throughout the pasta that get all melty and stretchy as the pasta bakes. When your fork hits a mozzarella clump its like the best treasure discovery you’ve ever experienced. I mean just look at the cheese pull in that pic. The portion sizes on this dish are quite large, because I’m basing it on what I’d eat on a very hungover Sunday (which turns out to be enough pasta for a 2 person standard serving). So be warned when you’re making this – I would say it serves 2 high appetite people, or 3-4 regular appetite.

Cheesy, Tomatoey, Sausage Pasta Bake

Serves 2-3 (2 very hungry) | 1 hour + 40 mins baking

Ingredients

1tbsp olive oil

1tsp butter

1 white onion, sliced crossways into thin half moons

1/2 my Italian Sausage Meat without the garlic

2-3 large cloves garlic minced

2tbsp tomato puree

1 400g tin whole plum tomatoes

Hanful parsley minced

Hanfdul basil minced

A few sprigs of rosemary minced

300g short pasta of choice, rigatoni or dusili

125g ricotta

150g ball of mozzarella cut into 1.5cm cubes

A grating of parm to taste

Method

  1. Heat the oil and buttere in a large saucepan or casserole over low heat. Once melted, add the onions with a pinch of salt and cook with the lid on, stirring often, until it partially caramelises (~15-20 mins).
  2. Once the onions are ready, push to one side of thee pan and splash a little oil in the other. Turn the heat to medium/high. Add the sausage meat – don’t stir for the first minute or 2. You want to form a nice caramelised crust. At this point start to break up the sausage into large chunks. Cook until caramelised all over and a nice fond has formed. Stir through with the onions.
  3. Add the garlic and good for a minute or two until fragrant.
  4. Add the tomato puree, stir and cook for another few minutes until slightly darkened in colour.
  5. Add the tomatoes and about half a tin of water, crush the tomatoes into smaller chunks with a spatula. Add the herbs. Bring to the boil and then immediately turn the heat to low.
  6. Simmer for 20-25 mins. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in heavily salted boiling water until al dente.
  7. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan
  8. Once the sauce is cooked, stir through the ricotta and add salt, pepper and parm and taste for seasoning. Add the pasta and 3/4 of the mozzarella chunks – stir to combine and transfer to your baking dish.
  9. Bake in the oven for 30-40 mins until bubbling and the mozzarella is nice and melty. Leave on the side for 5 mins and serve!
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.

Italian Sausage Detroit Pizza

Italian Sausage & Red Onion Detroit Pizza

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I’m not sure what inspired this but over Christmas I was just absolutely craving a Detroit pizza, having never had one before… For those of you who haven’t had the joy of trying a Detroit pizza, it’s a much breadier version of its Italian counterpart. Think along the lines of a focaccia with pizza toppings. The crust is thick & chewy with big air bubbles – it’s also rectangular. Basically all round delicious – a dream for bread lovers.

For this, I don’t have my own dough recipe as I’m not a bread-master but there’s lots of great options if you search for it. The toppings are a creation of my own though: my marinara, Italian seasoned sausage, red onions & a grating of pecorino once cooked. I’m getting hungry thinking about it…

Italian Sausage & Red Onion Detroit Pizza

Serves 4-6 (4 very hungry people) | 1 hour prep + proving time (depends on dough recipe used)

Ingredients

~700g dough of your choice (see notes)

1x my marinara sauce, cooked for pizza as per the instructions

1x my italian seasoned sausage

500g low moisture mozzarella grated (see notes)

1 red onion, thinly sliced

Grated pecorino to serve

Olive oil for greasing

Pan or pans totalling 1,500-,1600cm² – these need to be a baking tray about 2-3cm deep. I used 2 trays ~20cmx40cm each

Method

  1. Brush you pan(s) with olive oil. Split your dough in half and transfer to the pans. Rub more olive oil on top of the dough. Now leave to rest again covered loosely with cling film for ~1hour in a warm place.
  2. In the mean time, fry the sausage meat in a large pan with olive oil over a medium heat. Break into chunks, and cook until almost cooked through. You don’t want much too colour on the sausage as it will continue to cook in the oven. Set aside
  3. Preheat the oven to 230°C/210°C fan
  4. Push the dough to fill the pan & dimple with your fingertips.
  5. Sprinkle over the mozzarella then spoon over the, marinara in even strips. Next scatter over the sausage and sliced red onion.
  6. Bake until deeply golden (30-40 mins).
  7. Remove from the oven & leave to cool for 5 mins. Remove from the pan, sprinkle over the pecorino and serve!

Notes:

Dough – If you Google Detroit Pizza recipes there are lots of great options for doughs

Mozzarella – In the UK we can’t get blocks of low moisture mozz so we have to use the grated stuff. In this case you’ll need to wash the mozzarella to get rid of the starch (this is used to stop the cheese sticking to itself, but it’ll also stop you getting a nice melt). Put the cheese into a sieve and rinse under cold water until the water runs clear. Spread the cheese in a thin layer onto paper towels and leave to dry.

Italian Sausage Meat

Basics By Meg: Italian Sausage Meat

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Number 2 in my basics collection is an absolute staple for pizza, pasta, sandwiches etc. etc. – Italian seasoned sausage. This is similar to my Italian sausage roll mix but slightly less strong (i.e. no anchovies & no parmesan) in order to make sure it complements the dishes it’s added to. I love this fried up in chunks & scattered over a pizza, squashed into a patty & fried for in a breakfast muffin, or anything really. I have a few recipes using this sausage coming up so keep your eyes peeled for ideas of how to use it. This can be subbed into any recipe calling for sausage meat if you want to add an Italian twist.

Italian Sausage Meat

Makes 400g | 10 mins prep

Ingredients

400g sausage meat

2 large garlic cloves, minced

Large handful parsely finely chopped

2tsp fennel seeds toasted (or fennel pollen if you can get your hands on it)

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried oregano

A few shakes of chilli flakes

Salt & black pepper to taste

Method

  1. In a dry pan over medium heat, toast the fennel seeds tossing often until fragrant. Leave these to cool & grind in a pestle & mortar (or coffee grinder, or chop with a knife – be prepared for them to pop out as you chop)
  2. Combine all ingredients in a bowl & mix thoroughly.
  3. Taste & adjust seasoning by frying up a small batch.

Note: I definitely recommend fennel pollen if you can source it as it adds the fennel flavour plus some extra delicious aromatics.