Tagliatelle and the Easiest Dinner I Ever Made

The easiest dinner I’ve ever made is actually a peanut butter sandwich. But because it didn’t require any cooking, it doesn’t qualify here and so I’m going to stick with my guns on this one. This dinner took me 20 minutes to put together and aside from two pots and two dirty plates, there was no clean up.

But rattling on for three paragraphs about how easy-breezy my life is feels drab. I feel like I need to insert some element of danger here, some catastrophic fire or maybe a story about a big fight I had with my husband…

No such luck. It was a a pretty quiet night to be quite honest with you. The loudest noise was the sizzle of sweet Italian sausage in the saute pan. I assembled this crumbly, rustic pasta topping in a matter of minutes. And the smells of sausage and sun-dried tomatoes wafted through the house with such intensity, my husband was at the dinner table early.

I opened my box of Tagliatelle as if I were opening a very secret, delicate treasure. (As it turns out, nothing thrills me quite so much as razer-thin, gourmet pasta wrapped in shiny paper.) I reveled for a few split seconds in its hand crafted appeal and then I sunk it into a salted, boiling pot of water.

As the roar of the weekend came to a gentle purr on Sunday night, we feasted on this simple, rustic pasta dinner. With just a dash of fresh basil and a handful of Parmigiano Reggiano, I felt the deeply satisfying notion that all was right with the world.

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Tagliatelle with Italian Sausage and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

(Serves 4)

Ingredients:

2 cups sweet Italian sausage, rough chopped
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
5 tablespoons tomato Paste
1/4 cup dry white wine
10 basil leaves, sliced
1/4 cup Parmigiano Reggiano
1 lb. Tagliatelle
Kosher Salt (to taste)

Procedure:

1. Saute sausage in 12″ pan until cooked through.
2. Add diced onion to pan with sausage fat and caramelize until tender.
3. Add garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and tomato paste and mix.
4. Add white wine and simmer until liquid is absorbed, about 2 minutes.
5. Meanwhile bring salted water to a boil and cook Tagliatelle according to package directions.
6. Add pasta to to sausage-tomato mixture and stir.
7. Top with chopped basil and Parmigiano Reggiano

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Tagged as: recipe, spicy italian sausage, sun dried tomatoes, tagliatelle