blades
Veteran
While cooking is always fun for me, it is especially entertaining to start preparing the meal without a plan. I looked in the freezer for something to thaw for dinner and noticed I had three packages of Johnsonville hot Italian sausage. To cull the supply I brought one of them up to the kitchen with no idea what I would do with it. I often tour my fridge and pantry to find things that I think might go well together and hot sausage should be no problem. Sometimes this process results in failure but sometimes something good comes from it. That is what happened today so I though I had better memorialize the recipe in case I want to repeat it. Please note that I rarely measure things. i just get a feel for the proper amounts from experience and from taste testing. I'll bet some of you do the same. So the quantities in the ingredient list are just guesses. Please apply your own experience in case I missed the measurement mark.
The dish is basically penne pasta with the sausages removed from their casings and cut up into bite sized pieces, some veggies and a sauce which is a basic alfredo sauce. Nothing fancy just a simple and quick dish that ended up being wife approved. This was made to feed just the two of us. Here we go.
Ingredients
1/2 box of penne pasta or whatever pasta you find in your pantry.
1/2 red bell pepper coarsely chopped
1 small onion chopped
About a dozen asparagus spears
4 cloves of garlic (I think it is nearly impossible to put too much garlic in a dish.)
2 johnsonville hot Italian sausages removed from their casiings and cut into bite sized pieces
2 healthy pinches of salt and about 4 cranks of the pepper mill. Your mill may require more or less. You know the drill.
1/2 pint of heavy cream
A cup of grated parmesan cheese.
One more clove of garlic to nail down the garlicness of the dish
a healthy pinch of salt
Anything else you might put in your Afredo sauce. I threw in a little basil for no particular reason.
Instructions.
You want three cooking vessels, a large pot to boil the pasta, a small sauce pan to cook the asparagus and later the sauce and a deep skillet to saute or stir fry and combine the ingredients. Start the water boiling for the pasta and for the asparagus spears. Then heat the skillet and put a little cooking oil in it. Add the pepper, onion, salt and pepper. As soon as the asparagus is done, drain and put it with the other ingredients in the skillet and add the sausage and garlic. Use the pot drained of its water and asparagus to cook the sauce ingredients - cream, parmesan, garlic, salt and whatever you like in your Alfredo sauce. By the time the pasta is done you should have the sauce reduced about in half. Drain the pasta and put it in the skillet with the rest of everything and mix it all together. Plate the pasta and pour the sauce over it. I hope you like the meal.
Hot Italian sausage, as you know, is pretty spicy so there isn't a need to add much flavoring to the dish. If you choose to use mild sausage you may want to throw in some red pepper flakes and some acid like wine or vinegar to ensure the dish isn't bland. Happy cooking.
