Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

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...

Portway: Down to the Derwent and back up again

I've never been to Holbrook before. It's a small village on a hill, just south of Belper, and I instantly like it. Look at the view! And interesting buildings too. I leave my car to enjoy the scenery and head down Stony Lane. Good thing I didn't bring a vehicle for this bit - there are several signs warning me that This Is Not A Road. I pass a few farms and the back of Holbrook School for Autism and come out on Port Way, just where I left it last time . A short distance up the road is St Michael's Church, which has a semi-circular window, a secret tunnel, and a sprawling graveyard. The church is closed today. I'm now back in the centre of Holbrook. I take a left on Mellors Lane and soon leave the houses behind. There's a good playground. I still find myself rating play equipment, even though my boys are far too old for it now! I cross a couple of fields, then the ground starts to slope downhill, with a fantastic view across the Derwent Valley. There's a squa...

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...