Pasta with Sausage, Pumpkin and Saffron

Yesterday, after baking several batches of cookies and drinking enough espresso that I had the energy level of a personal trainer but the attention span of an 8-week old kitten, I struggled to put together an edible dinner.  All the grocery shopping I did this weekend was done with the intention of baking cookies - I'd completely neglected real food!

Here is a summary of the contents of my refrigerator:  2 eggs, leaf lettuce, parsley, half an onion, whipping cream, hot sauce, butter, gin, vermouth, one link of hot Italian sausage, half a pumpkin, a log of doggie biscuit dough, and a bottle of Prosecco that I'm saving for the day my writing pays the bills (thankfully, Prosecco has a fairly decent shelf life). 

Turning this motley mix of condiments, booze, and random food items into a meal was a dilemma requiring a little creativity on my part.  I knew I could combine the sausage and pumpkin with some kind of pasta, but how would I make it interesting and flavorful? 

I was up to the task.  The hot Italian sausage from DiPaolo & Rossi's is bold and flavorful, so it doesn't need much treatment to shine.  Butter and olive oil, parsley, onion, a splash of vermouth, and a pinch of saffron at the very end were all I needed to make a quick, gorgeous meal. 

Pasta with Sausage, Pumpkin and Saffron

2 cups short pasta shapes
2 T. butter
1/2 pound hot Italian sausage, sliced into 1/2" thick rounds
1/2 small brown onion, sliced into rings
2 c. cubed cooked pumpkin
1/2 c. dry vermouth
1/4 c. chopped parsley
pinch saffron threads
salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste
splash olive oil


Cook the pasta in boiling water.  In the meantime, melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pan over high heat.  Add the Italian sausage and the onion.  Cook, stirring regularly, until the sausage begins to brown and the onion begins to caramelize and turn brown.

Add the pumpkin to the sausage and the onions.  Stir for about 30 seconds, then add half of the vermouth.  It will evaporate quickly in the hot pan; stir quickly and constantly to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.  Turn the heat to low, then add the remaining vermouth, parsley, saffron, salt and pepper, and olive oil.  Stir constantly for about 2 minutes to scrape up any remaining browned bits from the pan, then cover and simmer for approximately 10 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Once the sausage and pumpkin mix has simmered and the pasta is cooked, add the cooked pasta to the pan with the sausage and pumpkin.  Stir for a minute or two so that all the pasta is coated.  Serve immediately.

Tales from the Tasting, Tuscan Martinis

Last night, The Wine Bottega on Hanover Street hosted a tasting featuring wines from France’s Loire Valley imported by Louis/Dressner, along with special guest Joe Dressner, one of the company’s partners and “kind of a big deal” in the wine world. 

What does that mean to me?  Squat!  After all, I still buy the $7 glass jugs of Carlo Rossi Chianti (I tell myself it’s just for my Chianti Tomato Sauce, but I always down a glass or two while I’m prepping and stirring).  But, the reason I began writing this blog was to record my culinary adventures and share any lessons I learn along the way, so I figured I should attend this event.  I’m very glad I did.

We tasted about 9 different wines, beginning with the whites and moving on to the reds.  Each was completely different from the previous, but if you asked me to describe those differences, I would sit there with the classic Deer In Headlights look on my face before replying, “why don’t you taste them yourself?  Then you’ll understand.”  That was the moment that I knew I had to ask Bottega’s proprietors if they had some sort of “Wine for Dummies” session that I could attend.  They do, and kindly, it is called “Wine 101,” not “The Moron’s Guide To Wine” or something along those lines! 

I am very excited to attend Wine 101– I love drinking wine, I can definitely taste the subtle differences between blends, but asking me to describe a specific wine or how one region’s blend differs from another would be like asking me to write a love song in another language – I know what I’m feeling, I know what I want to say, but if I don’t have the words to convey those thoughts to an audience so that they can relate and sing along, what’s the point? 

I have a feeling that no matter what I learn about wine, I’ll probably always stick to my Italian reds, such as Chianti, but variety is the spice of life.  My goal as a student is to learn to spot the differences in Italian regional varieties, and I’d like to soak up as much knowledge as I can about wines hailing from Italy’s Abruzzo region, which is the homeland of my Italian ancestors! 

Speaking of Italy, along with the world’s best wine, food, and people, it also produces Limoncello, a sweet and quite potent lemon-flavored liqueur.  In Italy, it is consumed as an after-dinner drink, served in cordial glasses and sipped slowly, but in the States it is more likely to be used as an ingredient in cocktails, as I have done in my original cocktail, the Tuscan Martini. 

Tuscan Martini 

6-8 pitted green olives (3-4 per glass, depending on size)

4 sprigs fresh rosemary

2 lemon slices

2 oz. limoncello

2 oz. dry vermouth

4 oz. gin (rosemary-infused gin is perfect for this recipe!)

serves 2

Prepare the garnishes for two martini glasses:

Thread 3-4 olives on a sprig of fresh rosemary, as shown in the photo.  

Using a sharp knife, remove the zest from the lemon slices, keeping it in one strip.  Twist it, add it to the glass.  Cut away the white pith from the lemon slice, use as a garnish on the rim of the glass. 

In a large shaker filled halfway with ice, combine the limoncello, vermouth, gin, and leaves from the remaining rosemary.  Shake well for approximately 20 seconds, then pour into the prepared martini glasses.  Serve immediately, and sip slowly – these babies are strong! 

VARIATION:  To make your Tuscan martini dirty, add a splash of the olive juice to the glass.