easy pasta sauce
This is what’s for dinner tonight. I’ve cooked it before, so this recipe and pictures might look vaguely familiar. Well, it bears repeating. It’s delicious. And EASY. I’m just going to have to start calling Jill Dupleix Aunty Jill – I use so many of her recipes. It’s because she’s brilliant.
This version of her recipe is slightly different to the one I’ve been using (taken out of delicious. magazine YEARS ago.) The earlier version doesn’t have milk or cream in it, but I’ll start using it because this is quite an intensely-flavoured sauce and the cream would settle it down a bit.
Jill Dupleix’s Spicy Sausage Pasta
6 small pork sausages or 3 large – make sure they’re good ones from your local butcher. Pork & Fennel (“Italian-style”) are particularly good, but you might like to get some spicier ones.
1 small onion, peeled
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
6 tbsp milk
400 g canned plum tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
pinch of grated nutmeg
sea saltf
reshly ground black pepper
500 g penne, rigatoni or similar short tube pasta
2 tbsp cream (optional)
freshly grated parmigiano
Slit open the skin of the sausages, and remove the meat, discarding the skins (I wear latex gloves to do this). Finely slice the onion. Heat the olive oil and butter in a frypan and gently cook the onion for 5 or 6 minutes until soft but still white. Pinch the meat into the pan and fry, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until it is cooked but not browned.
Add the milk and very gently simmer, stirring, for 5 minutes. Roughly chop the tomatoes and add them, with their juices, to the meat. Add the sugar, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until it is al dente, tender but still firm to the bite.
Add the cream to the sauce, and stir through, gently heating it through. Drain the pasta, toss well and serve with grated parmigiano.
Over to you…