2013 Cooking Club Week 48: Baked Orecchiette with Sausage

emc2

2013 Cooking Club Week 48: Baked Orecchiette with Sausage

First of all sorry for the delay in getting this up, a manic week doesn't begin to cover it!

So I had great plans for this but with the week that's been I've gonna for a simple stable of our that sounds and taste a little fancy!
This is a great little pasta bake that can be easily tweaked by swapping different types of sausage. I've used standard Pork Sausages, Italian sausages and this week I've gone for cumberland one. Orecchiette Pasta is available in most big supermarkets, its disc shaped about the size of 50c pieces. I sure you can swap in other types if you can get you get orecchiette.

Here's what you need:

400g Orecchiette Pasta
200g Spinach
200g Ricotta
4 good quality sausages (see above for different types)
1 Red Onion
2 Cloves of Garlic
1/2 tea spoon of Chilli Flakes
1/2 tea spoon of Fennel seeds
1 Tablespoon of Olive oil and a little drizzle for before baking
Grated Parmesan (a handful)



Cook the Pasta in a large pot of Boiling water as per the packet instructions, I usually have it a little on the al dente side. When the pasta is almost cooked drop in the spinach for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Drain the pasta and spinach and put it in the baking tray.
Heat the oil in your frying pan and fry off the onion and garlic over a medium heat for about 3 minutes. Add the Chilli Flake and Fennel seeds and fry for about 20 seconds. I tend to crush the chilli and Fennel before I fry them but you don't have to.
Remove the sausages from their skins and roll into little balls, 4 or 5 per person. Add these to the pan and fry until nice and brown usually about 5 minutes.



Add the Sausage mix to the pasta and spinach in the baking tray and mix. Now you dot the top with the ricotta, scatter a little Parmesan over the top and drizzle with some Olive oil.


Stick it into a 180 degree oven for about 15 minutes.



This serves 2 to 4 people depending on how hungry you are enjoy.

leahyl

Eeeek can't see pics sounds lovely though :pac:

MissFlitworth

This looks gooood. Like tonight's dinner sort of good.

(I couldn't see your images so I played around with them to get them to appear - just if you notice the links to them have changed!)

Malari

Oh that looks really good!

Malari

Malari wrote: »

Oh that looks really good!

It was I used basil and garlic sausages, and couldn't find orchiette so just used penne pasta. I would try it with a tomato sauce maybe the next time instead of ricotta. I really liked the fennel seed and chilli flavours.