Pasta with Sausage, Basil and Mustard
I’m totally hooked on Food and Wine, if you haven’t noticed! Haven’t found a bad recipe there yet. Tonight it’s Pasta with Sausage, Basil and Mustard from Nigel Slater, a spicy yet creamy comfort food dish fit for a cold Minnesota night. I never would have thought to put this combination of ingredients together on pasta, but it does kind of make sense — sausage and mustard usually work together. The cream mellows it out a little and gives it richness, but it’s still spicy. I used some of the pasta I nabbed at the Spice Bonanza, Sauce Blowout at Doomed World Market.
I followed the Food and Wine recipe except for halving the recipe and reducing the crushed red pepper a little. The recipe calls for using hot Italian sausage. I used Johnsonville Hot Italian and it contains crushed red peppers and is pretty spicy on its own. I put in barely a sprinkle of additional crushed red pepper, and unless you like things super hot, I would manage this part of the recipe carefully.
At the end of the recipe, it says to add the pasta and basil, toss to coat and serve immediately. I needed to keep the dish warm for a couple of minutes while I waited for bread to come out of the oven, so I just added the pasta and kept it on low heat on the stove, then added the basil immediately before serving. This gives you a little more flexibility by letting you keep the whole thing hot without blackening the basil unnecessarily. I made another discovery tonight: a tortilla warmer works just as well for keeping bread warm. The little steam holes keep the bread from getting soggy, and it stays warm much longer than in a basket with a cloth or in foil.
Tagged with crushed red pepper, food and wine, Italian bread, Italian sausage, minneapolis, minnesota weather, mustard, Pasta, tortilla warmer, white wine sauce
