radiatore with rapini and sausage
(omnivore)

recipe by mb

just the recipe

what I was looking for

I'm working on decreasing the meat and increasing the leafy greens in my family's diet, so I was looking for something that would fit that bill. And, as always, something easily prepared on a weeknight when I have no time.

what I made

I turned to our lovely book of the month, Alice Waters's The Art of Simple Food, and used the recipe for fusilli with greens and sausage (page 267), with a couple of fairly obvious changes.

chit-chat

Let me tell you a little story about this recipe. See, my husband claims to like leftovers, but in truth he really doesn't. He always says, "Make extra because then there will be some left over. Of course I'll eat it!" And he never does. Maybe he just thinks that eating food cold is gross and putting it into the microwave is too hard? I don't know. But whatever the reason, when there are leftovers in the house, they are inevitably eaten by me or by nobody at all.

With these leftovers, I didn't even have a chance. When I was cleaning up after dinner I looked over and saw a totally foreign sight ... J putting the rest of dinner into a tupperware and then putting that tupperware into his bag to take to work with him the next day. I believe that I actually stood there, water running while I ignored the dishes, staring at him with my mouth open in bewilderment. He turned to me, looked freaked out by the expression on my face, and asked "What's going on?" in complete confusion.

I swear, it was like a scene from a movie.

grades for my version

healthy	B	I'm giving it a B because it does have a fair bit of animal fat in it.
fast	B	Cooking sausage takes a while, because you really want to make sure it's all done, but everything else is quick.
easy	A	Fry sausage. Chop rapini and shallot. Boil water. Not much more to it than that.
cheap	A	Very pocket-friendly.
delicious	A	To die for.

yield

Alice's recipe makes 4 portions, but mine made 2 dinners + 1 lunch (grin!) = 3 portions.

equipment

   a pasta pot
   a frypan with a lid    or       a pot with a lid

the pasta

ingredients	Alice	mb	why?
pasta	¾ lb. fusilli	⅔ lb. radiatore	tastier [1]
Notes
[1]	I like fusilli and all, but for this dish I wanted something that had as many ridges as possible to soak up all the good juices: radiatore.

   Set the pasta water (salted to taste) to boil.

into the frying pan (or pot)

ingredients	Alice	mb	why?
olive oil	2 Tablespoons	none	healthier? [1]
sausage	fennel or Italian style	mild American "regular" style	tastier [2]
	¼ lb.	⅓ lb.	healthier
rapini (a.k.a. broccoli raab)	1 bunch, chopped	1 bunch, chopped	no change [3]
onion family	1 large onion, sliced thin	2 shallots, chopped	tastier
Notes
[1]	It seemed to me that frying the food in oil other than what the sausage renders was a complete waste, so I didn't add the olive oil.
[2]	I hate to say this, because I usually love anything with a licorice-y flavor, but I absolutely can't stand either fennel or Italian sausage. It wasn't until I discovered mild American sausage that I even liked it at all. So I've been buying big brand name sausage (you all know who he is).
[3]	Next time I'll use 1 bunch of rapini per adult. It'll be much better and much healthier that way.

Alice Waters and I have pretty different ideas on how to cook this dish. She wants us to first boil the chopped rapini. I don't want to do this because it means that lots of the nutrients leach out of the greens and into the water and you end up losing them. Total waste. So what I did was let them steam in the same pan that I cooked the sausage in. There's plenty of fat so that they don't stick to anything, they become infused with the flavor of the sausage, and you don't lose any nutritional content.

Waters also wants us to roll the sausage into little balls and fry them in olive oil. As I said above, I think that this adds more oil than is necessary. So I just broke the sausage up and fried it in its own grease. If it sticks to the bottom of the pan a little bit, don't worry about it; that'll all be easily scraped up after the rapini has steamed.

And finally, she wants us to cook the onion until it's completely softened and starting to caramelize. What I wanted was the occasional texture and flavor change of biting into a barely cooked onion (or shallot, in my case), so I cooked my onions at a different place in the recipe and for a different length of time than she did.

They're very personal changes, and I'm glad I made all of them.

No matter what kind of sausage you're using, make sure there are no casings to insure a much more pleasant texture.

      Heat your frying pan or pot over medium-high heat and then toss the sausage in. Cook till the sausage is cooked through and nicely crispy, about 10 minutes.

Remember the water you set to boil right before you put the sausage into the pan? Now add the radiatore to the pasta pot. It ought to come out timed perfectly.

Add the rapini to the pan with the sausage and give everything a stir. Now cover the pan and reduce the heat to about medium. This lets the rapini steam and start decreasing in size. Occasionally lift the top off and stir everything around. Soon you'll see the quantity of rapini in the pan getting smaller and smaller. This is a good thing.

Once the rapini has shrunk to about half its original size, about 10 minutes, throw the chopped shallot in and stir everything around. Turn the heat up to high, and try to get everything a little crispy. Keep stirring until the shallots start to lose their opaqueness, then remove the pan from the heat.

When the pasta is done and the sausage and rapini are done, drain the pasta, stir everything together, and serve. This dish is very good topped with a fresh grating of pungent parmesan cheese or drizzled with a small amount of olive oil.

And some would argue that it's even better the next day.

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