Nigel Slater’s Spicy Sausage and Mustard Pasta
Are you looking for a quick and delicious supper dish to try out? Why not give Nigel Slater’s Spicy Sausage Pasta with Mustard a go? Combining the heat of Italian spicy sausages and the tangy kick of mustard, creates a flavourful dish, speedy supper dish.
If, like me, some of your favourite dishes are ones that are ready in less than half an hour, you will fall in love instantly with Nigel Slater’s Spicy Sausage Pasta.
It is always helpful to have recipes that use stock cupboard items and that take half an hour maximum to prepare. I get home around 5.10pm on a weekday, Tim arrives home maybe an hour or 2 later (trains etc) and if something isn’t ready within about an hour, he’ll start snacking, thereby irretrievably denting his appetite (and mine, as I can never resist his sandwiches).
I like to prep supper as much as a can, so that when he does get it, we can just finish it off together and start our evening, whereby we chat about everyday annoyances such as work, lack of money or how Netflix never commissioned that third season of Mindhunter.
This particular pasta dish is one that caught my eye years ago, and I can’t recall if I first encountered it in Nigel Slater’s Real Food book or the accompanying show, that introduced the world to both Nigel AND Nigella. And the cosy food genre was born,
Ingredients
This recipe uses dried pasta, chilli flakes, mustard, and fresh ingredients you will need to pickup, basil, single cream and sausages (although I usually have a pack in the freezer in anticipation of making this recipe).
Don’t omit the basil, unless you really dislike it: it adds an essential fragrant piquancy that cuts through the overall richness of the dish.
I have made this dish vegetarian, by using decent quality vegan sausages (Richmonds are a favourite), and also used good quality plain sausages, if I can’t find ones with Italian spices. Sainsbury used to do a really nice sausage called The Garlicky One, but I can never find that locally. Tesco now do a pork, fennel and chilli sausage in their finest range and they are perfect for this recipe.
I prefer to use wholegrain mustard in this dish as well, and sometimes I use the liquid from the pasta water, instead of white wine. We rarely drink wine so we don’t have it in the house very often. I did recently use some Tio Pepe dry white sherry that we had leftover from Christmas (undrinkable) and that worked well too, but it really must be dry.
Oricchette is my pasta of choice (always) but you can’t always find it in the supermarkets at the moment, so use shells (conchiglie) instead.
Note: I have tried adding slowly fried onions to this but the flavour is completely drowned out by the loud mustard and chilli, so is a bit of a pointless exercise.
Nigel Slater’s Pasta with Spicy Sausage and Mustard
INGREDIENTS
- 200 g Oricchette Pasta or use pasta of your choice.
- 4 Spicy Italian Sausages
- 1 tsp Olive oil
- 1 Pinch Chilli Flakes more if you like it muy caliente
- 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
- 200 ml Single cream
- Black pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp Basil Leaves chopped
- 100 ml white wine optional (you can use some of the pasta water instead if you prefer)
INSTRUCTIONS
- Put a large pan of salted water onto boil for the pasta.
- Skin the sausages.
- Heat a little olive oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan (you want the meat to stick slightly and leave those lovely sticky bits on the bottom of the pan to enhance the sauce, or deglaze, if you will).
- Crumble the de-skinned sausages into the hot oil.
- Fry the sausage meat until cooked through and turning golden brown and sticky.
- Meanwhile, once the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook until slightly al dente. Drain.
- Add the white wine, let it bubble up and simmer for a minute or two
- Add the chilli flakes and mustard.
- Scrape the bottom of the pan of its sticky sausage bits and cook for a minute more.
- Throw in the basil leaves, torn, and season to taste. I don’t add any salt at this stage, but you might like to.
- Add the double cream and slowly bring to the boil so all the flavours amalgamate. Simmer for only a couple of minutes.
- Finally, add the al dente pasta, combining well.
- Taste for seasoning and serve.
