good recipe: sausage pasta

Not to inundate my blog with recipes, because this is not really a recipe blog, but I was planning to put this up instead of the chicken alfredo lasagna one and didn't, and I just need to get this recipe out of my system.

For this, you need:

- sausage! I like Polska Kielbasa or whatever. 1/2 lb

- pasta, probably around 14 oz. I use rotini because of my rotini love <3




- canned tomato product (I've used crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and tomato puree and they all work fine), maybe around 30 oz

- 1/2 onion

- 1-2 cloves crushed garlic, or garlic salt to taste

- crushed red pepper, as much as you like

- cheese to taste. I use Mexican Blend cheese because it's what we have around when I make it, but you could use parmesan and that would probably be very good



HERE'S WHAT YOU DO

1. Dice the onions finely. For me, I try to get each piece the size of my pinky nail or so.

2. Chop up the sausage into bite-size pieces. I prefer mine to be around the size of my thumbnail.

3. If you're using fresh garlic, mince it now.

4. Put water in a pot, bring it to a boil, and get those noodles cooking.

5. Mix the onion, garlic, and sausage together with red pepper in a saucepan. Saute the onions and garlic and pepper in the fat from the sausage until the onions are cooked through. Another good way to tell if it's ready (if you can handle it--be careful! It's hot!) is to taste the sausage fat. The fat should assume the taste of the onion, the garlic, the pepper, and the sausage. DO NOT DRAIN THIS. It is what makes the pasta good! And if you cook it long enough, most of the fat seems to boil out (I think it's mostly the water content that evaporates, leaving you with essentially a sausage fat reduction).

6. Pour in your tomato product and let it simmer until the noodles are done cooking.

7. Drain your noodles, pour them into your sauce, stir, and add a bunch of cheese.

8. Rejoice as you eat because the pasta is just SO AMAZING.

~~~

I usually make a double or triple batch because everyone here loves it.

You can also add other vegetables if you like. One time I added some peppers--they were good, but I forgot that peppers are aromatics and I added too much. The pasta tasted very much like red peppers. So just be careful about the amounts you add in.