Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Feeds: 2 people
Ingredients:
- 1 recipe Homemade Fresh Pasta
- 3 mild or hot Italian sausage links, casings removed and broken up into small pieces
- 1 shallot, minced
- 1/2 cup vodka
- 3 oz tomato paste
- 1 cup heavy cream, plus more to taste
- Kosher salt, to taste
- Red pepper flakes or jarred Calabrian chilis, to taste
- Parmesan cheese, to garnish if desired
Directions: Start with making the Homemade Fresh Pasta. For this dish, I like to use just 8 ounces of pasta which is about half of a recipe. It’s worth making the whole thing though because the noodles freeze really well and can be boiled straight from frozen so it sets you up for another dinner in the future.
Next it’s time to make the sauce. In a large skillet, add the crumbled sausage with a little olive oil and start cooking over medium heat. Continue cooking until fully cooked and browned to your liking. Remove from the pan and set aside until later. With the fat from the sausage still in the pan, add the shallots and saute until softened.
Add the vodka to deglaze the pan, stirring to release any fond that’s on the bottom of the pan. Continue simmering to reduce the vodka almost all the way. Next add the tomato paste to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes until it starts to change to a darker red.
Stir in the heavy cream and season with salt and red pepper flakes or Calabrian chilis, to taste. You can also add the sausage back into the sauce at this point as well. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and continue to simmer to let the flavors come together. Give the sauce a taste and season again right before adding the pasta.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta for 2-3 minutes depending on its thickness. Transfer the pasta to the pan with the sauce and stir to combine. You can add a little pasta water if you need to thin the sauce at all. Plate the pasta and top with parmesan cheese if desired. This is a pretty rich sauce because of the tomato paste and heavy cream so the parmesan can be overkill to some.
Notes: Of course, you’re more than welcome to just use a dried pasta for this dish as the sauce is great no matter what you’re having it with! We’ll have it with either store bought or homemade ravioli as well.