Suckered in again, as I am often am, after I both watched the show (America’s Test Kitchen) and read the recipe for this pasta dish(Cook’s Complicated, er, Illustrated). I thought it looked sufficiently putsy and delicious enough that I ought to try to make it. Italian sausage, mushrooms, cream and orecchiette. You have to make your own Italian sausage because regular sausage has fennel in it and apparently this particular sausage from the north of Italy does not make use of it.
Making your own sausage is easy enough since you don’t put it into a casing (that would give me pause). Shape the eat into a patty and quickly brown it, then chop it up. In the grease that remains in the pan, you brown mushrooms that have been chopped fine (I used a processor) and then combine it all with cream and toss in your pasta. Orecchiette was fine but anything would work.
It was a lovely meal but not lovely enough to make again. And I’d just as soon use regular sausage than go through the hassle of making it. Unless I want to go through that hassle. Which isn’t out of the question.
