Quick Sausage Pasta

Despite all my good intentions, healthy eating and all, I just could not resist making one of my favourite pasta recipes for you.

This is a recipe that I rely on, especially after a long day at work, it's a great quick tasty dinner and the leftovers are great for lunches.

This recipe is from the 'River Cafe Cook Book'.

All you need is 5 good quality Italian sausages, skinned (which is actually really easy to do, when you cut the sausages apart from their string you can just push the mince out of the casings, when you do this I suggest you 'mush' the meat together, as even though the recipe asks you to break the meat up in the cooking process this is actually easier to do if you start with something resembling a slab of minced meat).

Heat a good quality, non-stick saucepan ( with lid), add some olive oil and red onions. Once the onions have cooked down a little add the sausage meat, some finely chopped fresh rosemary, 2 chopped dried chillies (small), 1 bay leaf and about 1 tsp of cooking salt.
You want to let this cook on a medium to low heat until the meat is cooked through and getting a little colour.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to the boil, once boiling add a generous amount of cooking salt (about 1 tbsp), don't be afraid of adding salt to your pasta water, this is where the pasta gets it's flavour.

Now, when it comes to adding oil to your pasta water, I'm conflicted, personally I don't think it does anything, but really what does it hurt.

For the pasta it recommended you use penne, but I prefer rigatoni, It's up to you.

Next, the river cafe cooks use Parmesan cheese and cream in their sauce, I prefer just to add 2 bocconcini balls, torn up which adds creaminess and cheesiness to your sauce with hopefully less calories. Once you've added the cheese take the sauce off the heat if you haven't already.

When your pasta is cooked (aldente, anything more is just mush), toss it all together in the sauce pot and set it stand for a couple of minutes so the pasta absorbs some sauce and the whole dish just thickens up slightly.

Bon Appetit