quinn's place

this is a fairly simple pasta dish that is bulked up with lots of green goodness by way of the mighty little brussels sprout. a savory sausaugey & cheesy pasta always sounds quite delicious to me, but can also be so so heavy and feel like a total gut bomb!

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the brussels sprouts plus the walnuts serve as a sort of soffritto here (which is usually carrot, celery & onion), the base ingredients and flavors of this dish. the brussels bring an earthy, light & bright component while the walnuts add a nice soft crunch in the overall texture.

while the bulk of this dish is green brussels-heavy, they truly melt away and become disguised by the savory sausage. pete and i are (embarrassingly?) big fans of a straight up jimmy dean hot sausage log. it’s so versatile! we use the jimmy log and dress it up in so many ways - pastas, breakfast sandwiches, tacos, potato-ey dishes, etc. it’s just been an all-around easy to utilize pork product in our household. thank ya, jimbo.

the best part of this experience is that the brussels, sausage & walnut crumbles sneak down into the rigatoni tubes for a nice little tasty treasure trove in every bite. this combo would also be great with a different fat noodle like paccheri, or even pappardelle!

Brussels Sprout, Sausage and Walnut Rigatoni

Serves 3-4

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

1 lb. rigatoni
1 lb. brussels sprouts (10-12 medium sized brussels), finely chopped
2 cups walnuts, well chopped
6 oz. ground sausage (Italian style or breakfast style, etc)
1 large shallot, finely chopped
2 large cloves of garlic, minced or grated
juice of half a lemon
1 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese or parmigiano reggiano, plus extra
crushed red chili flakes
salt & pepper, to taste

Instructions-

Prepare all ingredients by chopping the shallot, garlic, Brussels sprouts, walnuts and grating the parmesan.

In a large skillet or heavy bottomed Dutch oven, cook the sausage on medium heat until browned, using a wooden spoon to break down into small crumbles. Don’t remove any excess oil as it will help to coat the brussels.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the dry rigatoni and cook as long as instructed on the package, leaving the noodles slightly al dente. (When the noodles are done, be sure to reserve 2 cups of the pasta cooking liquid and drain the noodles, or simply use a large slotted spoon to lift the noodles from the water and into the skillet with the cooked brussels, sausage & walnut mixture. You will use the remaining pasta water as needed to make everything saucy.)

While the pasta is cooking, add the chopped shallot and garlic to the sausage skillet, tossing to incorporate. Add the finely chopped Brussels sprouts and season with a generous pinch of salt, tossing and cooking everything until softened, 3-5 minutes.

Squeeze in the juice of half or a whole lemon to deglaze the skillet, using a wooden spoon to scrape up any bits of fond that have stuck to the pan. A couple tablespoons of red wine vinegar or a dry white wine would be another nice option for deglazing the pan if you don’t prefer a lemony flavor.

Add the chopped walnuts, mixing everything to incorporate all ingredients and soften the walnuts, 2-3 minutes. Add 1-2 teaspoons of crushed red chili flake, and plenty of freshly ground black pepper, tossing to coat.

Once the pasta is cooked and lifted into the skillet or Dutch oven, alternate between adding a splash of the pasta cooking liquid and a handful of grated parmesan, stirring well between additions to create a saucy emulsion. The rigatoni should be catching the crumbled sausage mixture inside each noodle tube :) Taste for salt and add as desired.

Once the pasta seems well coated, glossy and no longer clinging to itself, serve into a bowl, grating more fresh parmesan cheese over top, freshly ground black pepper and red chili flakes.

Enjoy immediately!

file this one under: first-timer food projects!

i had never made handmade pasta before this (i took these photos on my phone in september 2020). it was fun, easy and delicious.

i hauled the pasta to my bestie’s house where we also made handmade gluten-free pasta to conduct a side by side pasta taste test with the best bolognese recipe in the land.

this may be a very unhelpful blog post because i don’t even remember which pasta recipe i used to make this, but that’s not the point. making your own pasta by hand is a little bit of a process, but it is simple and worth it.

flour, eggs, olive oil and salt - that’s the gist of it. i may have used this gal’s recipe for the regular all-purpose flour pasta and her helpful methods.

another thing i learned after this process was about timing and freshness. if you’re going to make handmade pasta (and not freeze it), consume it within 24 hours. i think i had made mine and refrigerated the noodle nests for a couple of days before taking it to my friend’s house, so the noodles oxidized a bit and turned slightly green.

i learned a lot about fresh pasta and pasta storage from reading this article from the pasta evangelists.

i’m a big fan of big fat chewy noodles, so this process was very worth it to me. fresh pasta is one of life’s greatest pleasures, i say.

i discovered this cute shoppe in seattle that makes delicious fresh pasta - la pasta! there is a location in wedgwood, and i just noticed one on queen anne! i once tried their pappardelle noodles, and they were fantastic. i love that option for when you want to make a special pasta meal but don’t necessarily want to make the actual noodles by hand.

pete got me a few kitchenaid pasta rolling attachments for christmas that i’d been yapping about wanting for a while. after our current bathroom/kitchen remodel mayhem is through, believe you me that i am going to make all the pasta messes with those kitchenaid babies.

for the gluten-free pasta, we used the bob’s red mill 1-to-1 gluten-free flour and i believe we added 1 extra egg yolk to the same recipe i’d used to make the regular noodles.

we were super stoked with the final results of the gluten-free noodles! they were definitely more fragíle to handle, but after gently moving them to boiling water for a few minutes and adding the bolognese sauce, they were super scrumptious. we cut them to a pappardelle-like width and they had a nice texture!

you can see how my pasta nests did oxidize and change color over the couple days spent in the fridge - doesn’t mean they were bad, they were just not as “fresh” as they could possibly be. lesson learned.

i could have boiled the regular noodles a couple mintues longer, i think. they turned out a bit too chewy, but i was too nervous about overcooking them to mush (the worst!!).

^ above you can see the regular all-purpose flour noodle nests on the left, and the flat gluten-free noodles on the right.

i think next time i would keep the regular pasta drying flat or hanging straight; twisting them into nests and not flouring them before storage made them clump together unnecessarily, i think.

below are 2 very unattractive photos of each pasta 😂 taken by candlelight with the only parmesan cheese we had on hand, lolz. i would regularly use finely grated or parmesan shards.

this was actually the week of those awful awful wildfires happening on the west coast - we had all planned for this great camping trip, but we were totally smoked in for several days where all there was to do was cook & eat. 😈

^ left: regular/all-purpose (undercooked here, but oh well). ^ right: gluten-free (cooked properly, about 3 minutes in lightly salted high-simmering water).

both were great and andy baraghani’s bolognese is the star player, as usual. my personal takeaway after our taste test was that if you’re having a gluten-free eater over for homemade pasta night, the gluten will really not be missed! i enjoyed the texture and taste of the gluten-free noodles for sure.