Recipes

• Apple and Blackberry Shortcake
• Drunken Brown Sugar Bananas
• Four Hour Olive and Lemon Scented Leg of Lamb
• Gorgeously Simple Broad Bean and Parmesan Salad
• Grilled Lemon Whiting with Crushed Peas
• Honey Roasted Figs with Butterscotch Sauce
• Just Yummy Peas
• Lemon Delicious
• Melting Moments
• Pecan and Golden Syrup Tart
• Polpette - Italian Style Pork, Veal and Sage Meatballs
• Real Shepherd's Pie
• Soft Polenta with Braised Mushroom Ragu
• Spaghetti with Pork, Fennel and Tomato
• Tuscan Style Slow Braised Beans with Red Wine and Sage
• Up-the-Duff (Tinny Impaled, Beer Steamed) Chook
• Wheat Beer Sozzled Pork Spare Ribs with Sage and Garlic
• Yoghurt Cake with Lemon Syrup

 

Spaghetti with Pork, Fennel and Tomato

1 July 2008

(serves 4)
Inspired by a dish at a converted train station near Trapani in Sicily’s far west, this is one of my all time favourite home-cooked pastas. Ask your butcher for the sausage mince before he fills his surprise bags, or just squeeze out the meat if they’re already made.

1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
400g tin chopped tomatoes
about 200g pork and fennel sausage mince (otherwise use 200g coarse ground pork sausage mince and about 2 tsp lightly crushed fennel seed)
500g spaghetti
a good grating of mild pecorino or parmesan

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Heat the olive oil in a small pan and fry the garlic gently for a minute.
Add the crushed tomatoes and simmer 10 minutes.  When ready to eat, cook the pasta in 4 litres rapidly boiling water, which has loads of salt in, until it’s al dente – still firm to the bite.
While the pasta cooks, crumble the sausage meat (and fennel) into the simmering sauce and cook through. Stir in the drained cooked pasta, with a little of its cooking water to prevent it becoming dry.
Serve with grated cheese and freshly milled black pepper.