Orecchiette Pasta with Italian Sausage and Sage
Make on Fresco
This super fast family pasta dish is fantastic for hungry people at a moments notice. Little pasta ears, crumbled sausage and crispy sage!
Orecchiette are the most useful pasta shape nobody talks about. Those little cupped "ears" are built to catch things, and here they catch golden bits of crumbled Italian sausage, buttery pan juices and shards of crispy sage. Every mouthful comes loaded, which is exactly the point.
This is weeknight cooking at its most honest: one good ingredient doing most of the heavy lifting. Buy decent Italian sausages with plenty of fennel and garlic, squeeze the meat out of the casings, and let it brown properly (colour is flavour, don't rush it). A handful of sage fried in butter, a splash of pasta water, a snowfall of parmesan, and dinner is on the table in about 25 minutes. It tastes like you tried much harder than you did.
Serving suggestions
Keep it simple and serve it straight into warm bowls, with extra parmesan and a crack of black pepper at the table. It doesn't need much else.
On the side, a sharp green salad with a lemony dressing cuts through the richness of the sausage and butter. Rocket, shaved fennel and a few curls of parmesan is the obvious choice for good reason.
For something greener, add a tray of roasted broccolini or charred Brussels sprouts with chilli and garlic, or wilt a few handfuls of cavolo nero straight into the pasta at the end.
Bread is optional but encouraged. A hunk of crusty sourdough or garlic bread is handy for dragging through the last of the sage butter.
Need
- 1 Pack Orecchiete pasta (around 350g is usual size), cooked as per instructions
- 2 cured italian sausages (I used mild for a sweeter flavour)
- 1 Teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1 head of garlic, completely peeled
- butter as needed BUY
- 1 generous Handful fresh sage leaves
- pink salt flakes to taste BUY
- 100 Grams Asiago cheese to taste or other strong flavoured, but soft cheese
Do
- 1
While the pasta is cooking (it takes longer than most pasta shapes) place roughly chopped sausage, fennel seeds and all garlic into the mixing bowl and chop 8 sec/Reverse/speed 8. Make sure you get a rough but fairly even chop. We are going for chunky, rustic mouth sized pieces.
- 2
Cook 15 min/120°C/speed 2.
- 3
Place the butter into a flat frypan on a medium heat and toss gently until it starts to brown. Throw the sage leaves in a few at a time and remove and drain on paper towels as soon as they become crispy. Repeat with all the leaves until done, adding butter as needed. Sprinkle with salt and set aside.
- 4
Aseemble the dish with cooked pasta, a generous helping of the sausage mixture, sage leaves and crumbled cheese.
More
Eat immediately.
Served with
Tenina Holder is a wife, mother of five and grandmother of nine, who started cooking in the olden days before Thermomix was even a thing.
Tenina has become the premium go to source for all Thermomix expertise and of course fresh and easy recipes that work. Her cooking classes and foodie trips are sold out in literally hours, her cookbooks appear on the Australian best seller lists and her social reach is in the millions. Her Insider Club is the most fun you can have with a Thermomix and you really should join her! She believes chocolate, butter and salt are health foods. Her food positivity mantra is, eat everything, just not all at once!
