This recipe came together when I was visiting my Dad in Saskatchewan last week. I was in my glory as I searched through his PACKED pantry, fridge and freezer. When I lifted the lid of that freezer or opened the door to the fridge, it was quite unlike my own at home. Instead of following a recipe, I just sifted through is multitude of ingredients and combined some that I thought would be amazing together and created this Scrumptious Spicy Sausage Sauce (how's that for alliteration!) on a bed of whole wheat linguine. Sound good? Oh you bet it was! My brother and Dad both went back for seconds...and my brother is not really much of a food connoisseur. I made Chicken Cordon Bleu in a White Wine Cream Sauce a few days before that blew my mind, and he goes "meh, it's okay." But this he claimed my Spicy Sausage Linguine "is Awesome!"
Good. I pleased my McDonald's lovin' brother. So try it out.
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Serves 4
1 lb hot Italian sausage
1/2 lb mild Chorizo sausage
2 14 oz cans of tomato sauce (one of the cans I used had spices, onions and garlic already in it)
3 cloves garlic chopped
1/2 an onion finely diced
liberal amount of dried basil (around 1 - 2 tsp) or finely chopped fresh basil
1 tsp or so of dried oregano
1/2 to 1 tsp of dried chili flakes
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
Take your onion and chop it up nice and fine. Heat a saucepan to medium heat and add the olive oil and chopped onion. Let the onion sweat for a couple minutes and then add the chopped garlic. You add the garlic later since the garlic can burn so easily. Saute for a couple more minutes, then add your tomato sauce, basil, oregano crushed chili peppers and salt and pepper. Turn down to low and let simmer for 2o minutes.
Get a big pot of salted water on to boil. Once boiled add your dried pasta.
In the meantime, slice your chorizo into medallions and toss into a frying pan on medium-high heat. Slice the casing around the Italian sausage and take all the ground pork from the inside of the casing and dump in the frying pan. Continue to fry until the meat is browned.
Once browned, pour off the excess fat.
When the sauce has simmered, add it to the pan with the sausage.
Have a little taste and check all your seasonings. Give it a bit more salt and pepper if it needs it. Drain the pasta, serve it up and pile the spicy sausage sauce on top.
Click here for printable version of Spicy Sausage Linguine
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THE RESULTS?
This is one yummy pasta dish! If you aren't crazy about spice you can substitute the hot Italian sausage for mild, and leave out the crushed chili peppers. Or if you like it even spicier use both hot Italian sausage and hot Chorizo and the crushed chili's. I'm not crazy at all about green and red peppers, but you could saute them with the onions and garlic and turn this into a Sausage and Pepper pasta. The possibilities are endless on this one....and it's freakin' delicious.