Sausage meat is a lazy cook's best friend. It's already packed full of flavour so you can have a tasty dinner on the table in no time. Here it's incorporated into a tomatoey ragu that goes fabulously with wide ribbons of parpadelle pasta.
Boxes and ingredients are packed in facilities that handles Peanut, Nuts, Sesame, Fish, Crustaceans, Milk, Egg, Mustard, Celery, Soya, Gluten and Sulphites. Due to the war in Ukraine, it has been necessary to substitute sunflower oil with rapeseed oil in some products without a label change. The FSA have advised that allergic reactions to rapeseed oil are rare.
1
Onion
1
Garlic Clove
½
Flat Leaf Parsley
20
Parmesan Cheese
(Contains Milk)
250
Tuscan Pork Sausage
(Contains Sulphites, Cereals containing gluten)
½
Fennel Seeds
30
Tomato Puree
1
Chopped Tomatoes
200
Pappardelle
(Contains Cereals containing gluten)
Put a large saucepan of water with a pinch of salt on to boil for the pasta. Halve, peel and chop the onion into roughly ½cm pieces. Peel and grate the garlic (or use a garlic press). Roughly chop the parsley (stalks and all). Grate the parmesan cheese.
Put a splash of olive oil in a large frying pan on medium-high heat. Slit the sausage skin, remove the meat and add to the pan (discard the skin). Use a wooden spoon to break it up and fry until the edges start to crisp, 5 mins.
Add the onion and cook until softened, 5 mins. Stir occasionally. Add the garlic and fennel seeds and cook until fragrant, 2 mins. * TIP *: Fennel is quite a strong flavour. If you're not a massive fan, only use a little to start with. Add the tomato purée and cook for a further 2 mins.
Add the diced tomatoes to your pan and allow the ragu to simmer gently until reduced and thickened, 12-15 mins. Season with a pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper. * TIP *: Add a sprinkle of sugar too (if you have some). It will really lift the flavour of the tomatoes.
While your ragu is cooking, add the pappardelle to the boiling water and cook until ‘al dente’, 7 mins. TIP: ‘Al dente’ simply means the pasta is cooked through but has a tiny bit of firmness left in the middle. Taste it as you go to get it just right.
Once cooked, drain the pasta in a colander and drizzle over a little olive oil to stop it sticking together. Add the pasta to your ragu along with half of the parsley. Serve on plates and top with the remaining parsley and the parmesan cheese. Buon appetito!