In just thirty minutes, you can make a pasta sauce that will change your life. Sausage and leeks and tomato. Salt and pepper. And if you’re a spicy person, red pepper flakes to hot the sauce up a bit, or a lot.
A word about sausage.
The Italian sausage you commonly find in grocery stores and even specialty stores in the US is seasoned with fennel. My preference is no fennel, which might be hard to find. A kielbasa might fill the bill. At the italian market I frequent they have buy plain sausage. That means just salt and pepper. (Disclaimer: I’ve never actually made this sauce with fennel sausage, so maybe it’s okay? or even delicious?) Anyway, underneath each photo below I’ve written comments that take you through the recipe if you want to give it a try.
This is a diced, thin-chopped leek. About six inches. I chop well into the green part, but stop when I gets really tough and thick. The thin-chopped leeks are sauteed in olive oil, a couple tablespoons to get the sauce started. Then I add a little more oil.
This section of Italian sausage is about 4-5 inches, squeezed out of the skin.
Stir the sausage into the leek saute. Raise your the heat to medium high. Roll the saute with a spoon, jabbing the sausage chunks to break them up. In 5-7 minutes will brown the sausage.
The passata you get in jars has no chunks, no skins, no seeds. I buy jars based on price. About a cup of tomato makes the sauce. Warm it all up. Lower the heat to low. Cover and cook 20 minutes.
I got these by caserecci by accident in curbside delivery. We wanted garganelli. I really like the brand, Pasta di Camerino. The caserecci are sort of like strozzopreti (priest chokers). Everyone at the table was happy, though garganelli would have been better. For this sauce I’d say use just about any pasta other than spaghetti.
I’ll use about 2/3 of this package.
Makes 4-5 generous servings.
Pure joy!