Rigatoni with Fennel and Sausage

Pasta with sausage and fennel seeds a simple and tasty first course, very quick to prepare; Ideal to serve as a main dish. The rigatoni with sausage, fennel seeds and sauce are cooked by breaking the garlic to which we will add the fennel seeds and garlic while separately we will fry the sliced onion to which we will add the sausage until it has taken color. At the end we will add the pasta to the sauce and serve with grated Parmesan. I was certainly not the one who discovered the marriage of flavors between sausage and fennel. 

In Campania, they even sell sausages, in butchers, inside which there are the seeds of fennel, so that, during cooking, they release their own scent, giving it to pork. The fennel used for this pasta dish is not the wild one, but always belongs to the same family, and so I wanted to give a chance to a recipe found in an overseas magazine, in which the pasta was seasoned with a creamy sauce made from fresh fennel and sausage. Well, it is a dish that has rightfully entered my comfort food (and I would never have said it) and that I would eat every day. I am only held back by the fact that everything is but light.

INGREDIENTS

4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, of excellent quality

1 large fennel

5 fresh spring onions, alternatively 1 large onion

4 Sausages

2 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon fennel seeds, coarsely crumbled in a mortar

1/2 chili pepper

2 glasses of dry white wine

1 tablespoon Tomato Paste

4 tablespoons of cream

Parsley, fresh, chopped

Grated Parmigiano Reggiano

Fine salt

Black pepper, freshly ground

500 grams of Rigatoni

PREPARATION

In a large pan, preheat the oil and fry over low heat the fennel and onion, cut into small cubes, stirring as little as possible, for about ten minutes until tender. Add the sausage deprived of the gut, and chopped into bites, and cook for 8/10 minutes, making it slightly tanned. Add the poached garlic (after it will be removed), and the fennel seeds lightly chopped to the mortar, so that, during cooking, they release perfume. Add salt, pepper, chopped chilli and wine. Turn up the heat, bring to a boil. Then add the cream and tomato paste, letting the sauce thicken for about 20 minutes over low heat again. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package in salted water, drain and sauté in the pan with the creamy sauce just obtained. Then add the chopped parsley, more pepper if you like and grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Serve hot by decorating the dish with fresh wild fennel.