Ingredients
- 6 Italian sausages with fennel
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 carrot
- 1 stick celery
- 1 small onion, peeled and quartered
- 2x400g tins diced tomatoes
- 1tbsp.tomato paste
- 3tbsp. Spoonfed Foods Snag Jam
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1tbsp. extra virgin oil
- 500g rigatoni pasta
- parmesan cheese for serving
Let’s start cooking
Using a small knife remove the casings from the sausages and set the sausages to one side, discard of the casings. Peel the garlic and onion. Chop celery, carrot and onion into small pieces and place them with the garlic in a food processor. Whiz them in the processor for about 30 seconds or until you have a fine pulp.
Place a large frying pan over medium heat with a good dash of olive oil. Fry up the vegetables, stirring occasionally until the mixture cooks and softens. Whilst the vegetable mixture is cooking, use the food processor to blitz the sausage meat until it comes together in a ball. Add the sausage meat to the frying pan with the vegetables and cook for 5 minutes or until the meat has browned slightly.
Reduce heat to low and add the white wine, stir thoroughly and cook for about 1 minute. Add the jam, tomato paste and tinned tomatoes, stirring constantly. Cook for a further 5 minutes. Reduce the heat and allow the sauce to simmer. Whilst the sauce is simmering away, put a large pot of pasta water on to boil. Cook the pasta according to packet instructions and ensure that the pasta water is well salted. The water should taste of salt. Any type of pasta works well with this sauce but I particularly like to use Rigatoni.
Note – if you cannot find Italian sausages with fennel then simply add a teaspoon of fennel seeds to the sauce when you are cooking the vegetables.
Tip – by adding the jam to this recipe it provides the perfect amount of sweet and smokiness to balance out the acidity of the tinned tomatoes.
Recipe by Tanya Bartolini