Recipe: Stracci with Italian Sausage & Tomato

Who doesn’t love pasta, especially when it is served with a sumptous sauce? I created this delicious dish for my Pasta Making and Italian Sauces Cooking Class, and it is always a winner with my participants. Stracci in Italian means “rags” and as a culinary term means loosely cut or torn pasta. All you need to make stracci are some fresh lasagna sheets.  The success of the sauce depends largely upon the quality of the Italian sausages, so find yourself some good ones. Ideally, use fresh homemade pasta. Buon appetito!

Ingredients (serves 4):
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 Spanish onion, thinly sliced
500g Italian sausages, casings removed and crumbled
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
¼ – ½ teaspoon chilli flakes
¼ cup dry white wine
1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Handful freshly grated parmesan cheese
Splash of olive oil
½ bunch parsley, chopped
500g fresh pasta sheets, cut into triangles or squares

To serve: freshly grated parmesan cheese

Method:
1.    Heat the olive oil in a frypan over a low-medium heat.  Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until soft.
2.    Increase the heat to medium and add the sausage, garlic and chilli flakes to the pan. Cook, breaking up the sausage and stirring frequently, until the sausage is browned and cooked through – about 10 minutes.
3.    Add the white wine, then the tomatoes, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper (if preparing in advance, refrigerate at this point).
4.    Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of water to the boil, then add salt.
5.    Add the stracci to the boiling water and stir well to prevent it sticking together. Bring back to the boil and boil until al dente, about 4 minutes. Drain and return to the saucepan, reserving about ¼ cup cooking water.
6.    Add the sausage sauce to the pasta, together with a handful of parmesan cheese, a splash of olive oil, the parsley and the reserved water. Mix well to combine.
7.    Serve in pasta bowls with plenty of parmesan cheese to pass around.