20 Minute Easy Dinner Party Pasta With Only 5-ingredients
Plus: Italian food magazines, the fruit that grows out of rock, and "il rientro"
Ciao friends!
How are you? Has the weather turned yet where you are?
This past week has brought glorious rainy downpours and cool autumn temps to northern Italy. It’s that weird, transitional moment where I’m never sure how many layers to put on. Before I go out, I spy out into the piazza first to check what everyone else is wearing.
I’d planned an end of summer Napoletano pasta recipe for you this week, but with the sudden cool weather, I pivoted. Instead I’m sharing something even better: this perfect autumn pasta from Ravenna that’s been living rent free in my brain for months. Sausage, leek, and sundried tomato with fusilli, busiate or really any short pasta. It’s only 5 ingredients.
This delicately rustic pasta hits all the notes - savory, satisfying, one-plate, 20-minute meal with a delicious, almost brothy extra-virgin olive oil sauce infused with the sweetness of carmellized leeks and the tartness of sundried tomatoes, and sausage-y goodness.
Perfect for a casual dinner party (my favorite kind) or a family meal on a weeknight. I made it last week just for me and had leftovers for lunch the next day; I’ll make it again for my son this week as a back to school lunch.
In the meantime - exciting in progress works! I’m cooking up a fun giveaway for the end of the year. I’m so grateful that you’re all here and I want to share some of Italy with you, wherever you are!
Il rientro
The annual cycle in Italy is so incredibly different from my previous life in the US. My first summer season threw me into anxiety. Italians really disconnect in July and August; I actually thought maybe all my new friends were ghosting me! But it was just ‘le vacanze estive’. At the start of September, shopkeepers and bars rolled open their metal grates, and my friends returned in what’s called ‘il rientro’ or the re-entry, which is the return to normal life. It seems like every pause in Italy is just a little bit longer with a little more drama, filling life with more vibrancy and gratitude for the changes of season and the course of the year.
Italian food magazines
While Italian food traditions are strong, they are also in continual evolution. One way to find out what’s changing is cooking magazines. Here’s what’s on the cover of a couple of my favorite Italian cooking magazines: La Cucina Italiana and Sale e Pepe. Surprise! Both feature PASTA on the covers. I wanted to show you that Sale e Pepe issue has a spread on Insalate di Pasta… pasta salads…after I told you that they are not really a thing in Italy! Remember that? Well, they’re not really; these are described them as ‘versione gourmand’ (see lower left corner of the cover).
Although it’s true that I have never seen a pasta salad on a menu here, apparently Italians are making them at home! (Although not in my MIL’s house.) Despite summer’s end and the seasonal pause in beach and picnic lunches, pasta salads are a great choice for a bag lunch, so I’ll be doing a little testing (and eating). I’ll let you know if I find anything super-buonissimo to share!
The fruit that grows out of rock walls: capers and cucunci
Have you seen Viola Buitoni’s Instagram series called “The Secrets of Capers” yet? This summer the Italian-born, San Franciscan chef, instructor and food writer visited a caper farm on the island of Salina, off the northwest coast of Sicily, a hot, sunny place known for producing exquisite, top quality capers. Viola explains the whole farming process in her series.
The marvelous thing is that this small, Italian slow food producer ships outside Italy, even to the US. Grateful for this contact, I placed an order ASAP directly over WhatsApp and here’s what I got.
I’m already eating the cucunci, which are the fruit or caperberries of the caper plant. I ordered the cucunci in salt and soaked them overnight to pull out the salt. Have you had these before? While capers are pretty easy to find, caperberries are not and this is my first time eating them! They’re elongated, crunchy, with a semi-hollow interior like a a pepper. Their taste is more delicate than a caper but similarly fruity and provides a satisfying crunch, kind of like a pickle, in a sandwich or salad. Viola’s recipes in her book, “Italy by Ingredient,” inspired me to top of my bruschetta with Sicilian red pesto and caperberries this week. (Photos in the next section.) I can’t wait to taste the rest, especially the caper leaves.
Links to Viola’s series and contact details to get some caper loot of your own!
Sapori Eoliani WhatsApp: +39 339.817.6716 / Website where you see all the goodies
Pimp My Pasta
So it’s me this week! I’ve made Valentina’s Sicilian red pesto from our last collaborative post and want to show you. I did everything she said. I made the pesto, I ate the pasta, I had avanzi or leftovers. I toasted bread to make bruschetta and used the pesto as a spread for lunch and you know what? It was insanely delicious. If you have fresh or sundried tomatoes, get yourself some ricotta and make this. Future you will say ‘grazie’, you’re a cooking genius. Send me a message or comment if you try it!
This Week’s Scrumptious Pasta from Ravenna
I had this pasta at a wonderful trattoria off the beaten path in Ravenna in the Emilia Romagna region, not to far from the sea. Coco sat at my feet, begging for sausage while I ate. I was not sharing; it was that good. Here’s the details, IG link, and photo from the restaurant. I know it looks different from mine! I used up all my busiate last week on my Napoletano recipe testing. Oooops. Trust me, if you use busiate, yours will look like this. ❤️
Trattoria al Cerchio Via Cerchio, 13, 48121 Ravenna RA
pst! Scroll to the very bottom to download recipe pdf!
Sausage, leek and sundried tomato pasta
Pasta con salsiccia, porri, e pomodori secchi
FOR 4 PEOPLE
The ingredients
180ml / 12 Tbls good quality extra virgin olive oil (this is creating your sauce, so don’t skimp!)
300g leeks, dark green ends removed, then cut in half lengthwise then sliced into thin half-moons (about 4)
300-500g salsiccia, remove the outer casing, then cut into 2cm / 1 inch chunks (I prefer more of a 1:1 ratio of pasta to salsiccia so I prefer about 300g but if you prefer more, lean towards 500g)
10 sundried tomatoes, sliced cross-wise (so will be a similar size to the leek slices)
6 g / 1 tsp salt
360-400 g fusilli or other short pasta (*I used buckwheat fusilli, which has a very light nutty flavor and a bit more al dente bite which beautifully complemented the rustic sausage. See more in notes below.)
Pasta water - reserved
The method
1) Fill a big tall pot with water and salt and set on high heat stove burner. Taste the water to make sure it’s salty like the sea (and add more salt if needed).
2) Add all extra virgin olive oil to a wide saucepan/skillet on med-high heat. Heat for a minute, then add the leek. Stir to coat.
2) Don’t go anywhere! Stir every few minutes for the first 10 minutes. The key is to slowly heat and carmellize their sugars a bit, infusing the oil with the sweet, onionyness of the leeks and melting them a bit. It’s critical to watch and be sure they’re browning, not burning. Turn down the heat a notch if necessary.
3) Add the sausage and sundried tomatoes and stir, turning your sausage pieces so they’re getting cooked on all sides, but not browned or crunchy. In the photo, you can see that I browned the sausage (oops!), but that was only when I reheated the leftovers. At the trattoria, they left the sausage unbrowned and I recommend that - it’s a more delicately rustic flavor.
4) About 10 minutes into the cooking process, when the water boils, add the pasta and cook to the package time (al dente), stirring occasionally. This way the sausage and pasta finish cooking at the same time. (Assuming the pasta takes approx 8-10 min to cook)
6) Add salt to your sausage and vegetables and stir. Leeks will be translucently golden and floppy, sausages will be fully cooked and show no signs of pink on the outside.
7) Scoop several spoons of pasta water into your sausage pan and stir to combine.
8) Strain pasta and add to the warm sausage and veggies pan. Stir for about a minute to let the pasta absorb the flavors.
Divide your pasta into pasta bowls and top with grated parmigiano reggiano.
When you finish eating, grab a piece of good bread to soak up the remaining olive oil. This is called doing the scarpetta!
Serving tips:
· Serve with parmigiano
Notes:
Salt: It’s important not to skimp. This salt is flavoring both your pasta and also your sauce in the form of pasta water.
Pasta: you could use almost any short pasta like fusilli, busiate, or casarecce. Your goal is to choose a shape that will allow you to easily fork up a pasta and sausage easily in the same bite, with some of it’s veggies. I used up the busiati in my Napoletano pasta testing, so I used buckwheat fusilli instead.
Sausage: The original recipe used a mild sausage. I tested with mild sausage and also sausage with fennel, a classic Italian combo. I think it could also be good with a spicy sausage.
*Pasta sleuths: You might notice that the pasta is darker in color than a typical wheat pasta. This is because I used spaghetti di grano saraceno a.k.a. buckwheat! I really try to eat a variety of grains in my diet, not just wheat, and buckwheat pasta is a dream to cook with. It’s light in flavor and very faintly nutty, as well as gluten-free. Have you tried buckwheat pasta? Let me know in the comments!
Buon appetito!
x Lolly
I had to come back to tell you how much I love this dish. I’ve made it three times for my family of four and we all love it! I always have frozen brats in the freezer so it’s easy to throw together (we live in Wisconsin) and tonight I declared this to be my favorite way to eat brats. I use a full jar of Trader Joe’s sun dried tomatoes and it’s seriously amazing. Thank you. Now I’m trying to decide which of your recipes to try next!
Definitely trying this although won’t get my husband to eat buckwheat pasta!