Linguine with White Clam Sauce In A Hurry

When I got home from work tonight, I was starving. As in, "feeling woozy and should have eaten a snack earlier" starving. I whipped this up in the blink of an eye. So easy, so good.

1 large or two small spicy Italian sausage
1 TSP minced garlic
1/2 medium white onion, fine dice
1 cup white wine
2 6.5oz of canned chopped clams, reserve the juice
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped fine
salt and pepper to taste
2 TBSP butter, cut in half
1/2 box linguine, cooked al dente

Brown sausage in pan, but do not cook completely. Let rest on cutting board for a few mintues. Add 1 TBSP butter and 1 TBSP olive oil to deep saute pan. Add garlic and onion and saute for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, slice sausage thin and add back to saute pan. Saute for 5 minutes. Add white wine to pan to deglaze. Add reserved clam juice. Stir well, scrape up the flavor bits from the bottom of the pan. Add clams and stir well, saute two minutes. Add parsley and remaining 1 TBSP of butter. Mix with linguine, serve, and enjoy!


Notes:

I bought my sausage from the Fresh Market. I believe they make their sausages in house. They are easily twice the size you'd expect. If you're near the Fresh Market, I would totally recommend them. They are $3.99 a pound. The one I bought was $1.54, or just under a half a pound!

I'm lazy these days, so I've been using minced garlic in a jar. So easy!

If your feelin' fancy, buy a nice bag of clams from your fishmonger (I love that word!) and toss them in the sauce. But save that for some night when you're not racing home to make dinner before you pass out and are trying to put on jammie pants while your pasta is cooking...or whatever it is that you might do after work. Ahem.

I like adding a bit more butter than usual to this. It adds a richness to the sauce that I like. I do not like cheese with seafood, generally speaking. I also don't want to add cream to this lest it taste like clam chowder on noodles.

Double this if you want two-er, four servings.

Rigatoni with Broccolini and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

1 bunch broccolini, cut into 1" pieces
2 TBSP sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, cut in to 1/2" cubes
1/2 bag dried rigatoni pasta
olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Cook pasta in large pot in very salty water. (Salt=flavor people!)

Add olive oil to large saute pan, when hot, add broccolini and saute for 5 minutes. Add garlic, crushed red pepper and sun-dried tomatoes, continue to saute for another 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. When pasta is al dente, drain and add to pan with broccolini. Add mozzarella and toss all ingredients together.

Notes:
If you can't find broccolini, you could certainly substitute regular broccoli. If you use a whole head of broccoli, you may want to double the other ingredients.

I like my cooked broccoli and broccolini to be a little crunchy. You may want to cook this a little more.

This reheats very well. It should give about 4 servings for me.

Don't add your garlic, crushed red pepper or sun-dried tomatoes to the oil before the broccolini or they will burn.

I used oil cured sun-dried toms here and added a little of the oil to the pan for cooking. You could use any kind of sun-dried toms here.

I love rigatoni pasta because I think you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's a big pasta, which means I can eat a little less and be satisfied.

The Italian school of thought on cooking pasta is that it should be boiled in water that tastes like the sea. That's a bit much for me, but pasta does typically need a lot of salt to taste like anything.