Pasta with sausage and greens

It's a rush blog this week, so you get a recipe. Because that's quick and easy. And so is cooking this.

Pasta is a problem in our house. Well, not so much the pasta, as what to put on it. Graham doesn't like creamy sauces, and Toby isn't that keen on tomato ones, so that kind of leaves... pesto. Or recipes like this where you just stir all the bits into the pasta, and it somehow has enough flavour and juiciness not to need a sauce.

Pasta with sausage and greens
200g pasta
1 lb sausages
1 onion, sliced
50-100g spring greens / kale / whatever, sliced
1/4 tsp dried thyme
6-8 cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered, depending on size
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Cook pasta and drain, reserving a little of the cooking water.
In a large pan, fry the sausages. When cooked, remove from the pan and slice on the diagonal.
In fat from sausages, fry the onion until soft, about 5 minutes.
Add the greens and thyme and cook 3-4 minutes more.
Add the tomatoes and sausage to the pan, and just let warm through. You don't really want the tomatoes cooked, just not stone cold.

at which point it looks like this

Stir in the cooked pasta and vinegar, with a splash of pasta water to moisten it all up.
As usual with my recipes, this serves two hungry adults plus a couple of small boys, but it's the kind of thing that is nice for lunch the next day too.

Comments

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Laid-back Lille and Bustling Brussels

After a night in a tiny AirBnB in Canterbury , where there were chocolates on the table and artwork on every inch of the walls, we boarded a ferry with an absolute minimum of fuss, enjoyed a smooth crossing of the channel, and were deposited in the decidedly unscenic surroundings of the port of Dunkirk two hours later. Once we got past the cranes and shipping containers, though, the countryside was flat but pleasant. We stopped at a small town called Cassel, reached by cobbled roads winding up a hill. On the summit was an old windmill and a topograph telling you the distances to various improbable places; St Omer may have been visible in the haze, but Manchester was surely over the horizon. In Lille, we found our apartment, unpacked the luggage (one rucksack apiece), and set out to find food. Our first choice was fully booked, so we embarked on that kind of aimless wandering where everyone is hungry and no one wants to actually choose a restaurant. We reached a Lebanese place call...

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog