Recipe Courtesy of Cook’s Illustrated, All Time Best Sunday Suppers Cookbook
This simple pasta (which only contains 6 ingredients!) is in ‘the lazy Sunday cook’ section of a Cook’s Illustrated, All Time Best cookbook I recently purchased. The entire cookbook is filled with crave-able comfort dishes that just scream for a place at your Sunday dinner table! This pasta works well with any tubular pasta, and starts with cooking some sweet or hot Italian sausage in a large Dutch oven. Once the sausage is cooked, onions and sliced fennel are added right to the same pan along with tomato paste and salt and pepper to taste.
I have to confess that I also included some sliced garlic and white wine here to deglaze the pan, and highly recommend, just as the recipe states, to reserve some of your pasta cooking water for the sauce. Adding that starchy, warm water right into the pan with the sauce and cooked pasta gives some body to the sauce and really brings it all together. Adding the cooked pasta to the sauce really allows each and every piece of pasta to be coated perfectly in the tomato-based sauce as well. Served with grated cheese and some chopped fennel fronds, this will become one of your favorite go-to pasta dishes in no time!
(To view this recipe, click on the blue title of the blog post above*)
‘Ziti with Fennel & Italian Sausage’
Ingredients:
- Recipe Courtesy of Cook’s Illustrated, All Time Best Sunday Suppers Cookbook*
- 1 pound sweet or hot Italian sausage, casings removed
- 2 onion, halved and sliced thin
- 1 fennel bulb, fronds chopped, stalks discarded, bulb halved, cored, and sliced into 1/2-inch pieces
- 1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
- 1 pound ziti
- salt and pepper
- 1 ounce Pecorino Romano cheese, grated (1/2 cup), plus extra for serving
Directions:
- Recipe Courtesy of Cook’s Illustrated, All Time Best Sunday Suppers Cookbook*
- Bring 4 quarts water to boil in a large pot for pasta. Cook sausage in Dutch oven over medium-high heat, breaking up meat with wooden spoon, until no longer pink, about 4 minutes. Stir in onions and fennel, cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Uncover, reduce heat to medium, and continue to cook until vegetables are golden, 10-12 minutes.
- Add tomato paste and cook until darkened, about 3 minutes. Stir in 2 cups boiling pasta water and simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, add pasta and 1 tablespoon salt to boiling water and cook, stirring often, until al dente. Reserve 1 1/2 cups cooking water, then drain pasta and return it to pot. Add sausage mixture, Pecorino, and 1 cup reserved cooking water and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add remaining cooking water as needed to adjust consistency. Sprinkle individual portions with fennel fronds and extra cheese before serving.
Tagged: All Time Best, casarecce, Cook's Illustrated All Time Best, Cook's Illustrated All Time Best Sunday Suppers, Cooks Illustrated, fennel, fennel fronds, hot Italian sausage, Italian sausage, onions, pasta, pasta with fennel, pasta with fennel and Italian sausage, pecorino cheese, sausage, Sunday Suppers, tomato paste, tube pasta, tubular pasta
Just made this for the first time. Absolutely delicious. I used one 8 oz. hot and one 8 oz. sweet sausage and followed the recipe exactly. Very unique flavor that’s unlike most all other pasta dishes. Could very well be my favorite pasta dish of all time.
Super Bob! Glad you enjoyed it. If you liked this recipe, you would love the ‘Baked Pasta alla Norma’ recipe or ‘Easy Baked Rigatoni with Meatballs’ recipes from recent posts as well.