This Tuscan pasta with fennel —and sausage for those who eat meat—is another dish that can readily be vegetarian or not. Don't worry, veggies don't lose out: the mushrooms and spinach see to that. You'll find both versions here.
The Vinci Code
This Tuscan pasta with fennel is not one of the dishes my dad eagerly recorded in his journals on his culinary adventures in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather, it's one I discovered for myself in Florence. It's a recipe passed on by Valeria, a friend who told me that it was a dish she learned from her aunt who lived in the old family home in the town of Vinci, close to Florence, where her mother had grown up. She didn't know if it was a traditional Tuscan recipe. But she smiled and shrugged: it was certainly a traditional family recipe for her family a long as she could remember.
Valeria told me that the version with sausage—or cubes of speck or ham—tended to be eaten more in colder months, while the vegetarian version was often favoured in summer. But, there was no hard and fast rule.
Similarly, she first cooked the sausage version for me with pappardelle; typically Tuscan. Not long after, in a little osteria in Montecatini Terme, we had the vegetarian version with testaroli, a Tuscan signature. Though standing in place of pasta, in fact it's not pasta at all, but made from flour crêpes rather than the usual noodle ingredients.
I've opted to make my sausage version here with distinctly not Tuscan bucatini, well, because it's one of my favourite pastas and I had some to hand. And I'm doing the veggie version with my beloved paccheri rigati —which is apparently Tuscan as opposed to the really big Neapolitan version—because it's the most similar to testaroli in form and because I'm feeling lazy: testroli are not that difficult to make from scratch. Basically, this dish works with any number of long, thicker pastas or those tubular ones that are closer to a barrel than a hypodermic needle in "gauge". Think 12-bore not 9mm.
On the sausage front, I'm using simple pork sausages that include some green herbs. Valeria stressed that you should not use any type of sausage that is too heavily spiced. Having naturally disobeyed her rule in the past with salsiccia that were heavily spiced—c'mon they had fennel in them and fennel is a lead flavour in the dish!—I now understand exactly what she meant. This is ultimately a very green and fresh dish, despite the moderate richness of the cream. The spiced salsiccia was simply overkill.
Similarly, I'm cooking the sausage version here with fiore de finocchio, simply because I am so delighted to have some. But, Valeria's recipe uses oregano—and, importantly, dried oregano rather than fresh.
Two-for-one
Just as this dish shifts effortlessly between meat and vegetarian versions, I learned from Valeria that the same baseline recipe was used to make smoother versions—which she called pesto—and coarser versions—which she called rusticana. And, as with the seasonality, there weren't any fixed rules: some people prefer the pesto with slices of sausage added in the final phase while others opted for a veggie rusticana, with its discernible chunks of fennel. In this spirit of mix-'n-match, I'm cooking both: a rusticana with sausage and a vegetarian pesto version without. And, with each, I'm making a side salad that I think works well with each respectively.
The quantities in this recipe will serve 3 to 4 diners. Please note that the images here are from cooking it scaled down and are therefore not indicative of cooking quantities.
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Shopping list
for the Tuscan pasta with fennel (and sausage)
Approx. 90g dried bucatini (or pasta of choice) per diner
Approx. 1.5 to 2 pork sausages per diner
2 medium brown onions (or red); roughly chopped
1 large fresh fennel, roughly cut into short "strips"
3 or 4 sticks of celery, roughly sliced
Approx. 150g fresh young spinach
Approx. 150g closed cup mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves garlic, finely cubed
500ml white wine
500ml chicken stock (or vegetable stock); homemade or store-bought
1 tspn dried oregano ( or ½ tspn fiore de finocchio)
250ml single cream
A generous clutch of parsley, chopped
4 tbspns virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 bay leaves—dried or fresh
for the salad
Iceberg lettuce, washed and torn
Baby cherry tomatoes, quartered
Cucumber, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
Classic mustard vinaigarette
OR
Mixed salad leaves (Lamb's lettuce, beetroot, Rosini lettuce, etc.)
Small pitted black olives, halved
Crostini croutons
Balsamico and extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Cooking Method
the Tuscan pasta with fennel (and sausage)
Brown the sausages in a little olive oil on a medium heat, ensuring the skins are truly browned. When they are, even if the sausages are not entirely cooked through, place to one side and slice once cooled
Add additional olive oil to the fat and juices in the pan and sweat your onions on a medium heat, adding the garlic once the onions begin to soften. Then add about one third of the white wine and cook off. If the wine cooks off too quickly, add a dash of the stock to prevent sticking
When the onions are notably softened, add the celery and stir in, adding a little more wine and a little more stock. Sauté for about 5mins, then add the sliced fennel and stir in. Season with salt and pepper. Add the remainder of the wine and cook off. Add the oregano and stir in
Add the mushrooms and stir in. Once they begin to brown, pour in the remainder of the stock and increase the heat so that it reaches a boisterous simmer. NB: you may need to add additional boiling water from this point on as needed. Simmer the ingredients vigorously, lid off, until the fennel and other ingredients are cooked but slightly al dente. At roughly this time, boil your pasta
Add the sliced sausage to the pan. Reduce the heat slightly and gently simmer until the sausage is fully cooked
Add the cream, stir in and allow it to cook in. It's fine for it to gently simmer, but don't let it boil too long—you're not making panna cotta—so keep an eye on the heat. Cook it until the cream has fully assimilated. Taste it: you will know when but it usually takes about 5 or 6mins
Add your spinach to the top of the pan and allow it to rest there for a minute or so before folding in
Even before the spinach is fully wilted, add your hot, drained pasta into the pan and fold in, ensuring it's coated in the sauce
When both sauce and pasta are optimally cooked, turn of the heat and add the chopped parsley. Fold in gently, allow it to be wilted only from the heat of the ingredients
Plate and take to table with the salad of choice
Alternatives
This dish is intrinsically one in which the vegetarian version is never far away. But, I confess that I've never attempted a vegan or pescatarian version. Cream is a key ingredient and I don't have enough experience of cream alternatives to offer a valid opinion. If you know a cream alternative that cooks well, great, just adapt the veggie version. And, on the fish front, I've simply never got around to trying it.
For vegetarians, nothing could be simpler. Here is not only the veggie version, but also the pesto version. That said, the rougher rusticana veggie version is equally delicious.
Follow steps 2 to 8 in the recipe above, obviously using vegetable stock and not chicken stock
While undertaking this cooking, place an additional 200g of sliced mushrooms on a non-stick baking tray, sprinkle with a little dried oregano and spritz/baste with a little olive oil and dry-roast in a hot oven (e.g. 225° C) for about 20mins, turning occasionally. They will roast down to being relatively dry: good, that's what you want
Once the ingredients are cooked to the rusticana version, blend into a smooth sauce using a hand-held blend or in a food processor
To a large pan with a dab of heated olive oil, add your cooked, drained hot pasta. Add the pesto almost immediately and stir in so that it fully coats the pasta. Plate, adding the roasted mushrooms, the raw chopped parsley and cheese, if desired. Serve with a side salad of choice
Pairings
This is one of those dishes where the version with sausage my lead you in the direction of reds, the veggie in the version of white wines. But, much like the format of the dish, their are not hard and fast rules.
The first time Valeria made this dish for me, we had it with a typically Tuscan Sangiovese and that still tends to be my favoured route. Rather oddly, the one that sticks in my mind is Australian, Michelini Italian Selection Sangiovese 2012. Go figure.
And, with the veggie and mushroom version, the best match was undoubtedly the Villa Danieli Friulano, no doubt influenced by the fact that I bought it on site at the vineyard. But, that said, Friuli is an Italian white to which I constantly return for this dish. Those snotty old popes who declared it their "official" wine were on to something.
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