pici con salsiccia e zucchini
pici with sausage and zucchini
This is one of the easiest and most enjoyable to cook examples of the meat and vegetable combinations I’ve done, and when I stumbled across this pasta in a trattoria in Siena this summer I couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried putting sausage with zucchini before. It seemed to work so well that I decided I was going to steal the idea, with a few tweaks, for this book!
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
slice and cook the zucchini
skin and fry the sausages
pick some parsley leaves
boil and cook the pasta
combine ingredients and pasta
pici with sausage and zucchini
INGREDIENTS
FOR FOUR PEOPLE
400g sausage meat (Black Farmer)
3 medium zucchini
fresh parsley, to taste
butter, to taste
white wine, to taste
PASTA
400g dry pici / spaghettoni
(I used dry pici from Morelli)
an alternative is M&S Spaghettoni
MANTECATURA (?)
light to moderate
METHOD
If you can't find pici, use the thickest spaghetti or spaghettoni you can find - in the method shots below you can see I did a variation with M&S 'spaghettoni'; Garofalo also used to do thick full-length spaghetti. Start by slicing the zucchini into 3mm thick discs and fry they gently in EVO until they soften. Stop before too many of them have begun to change colour and turn translucent; we want to have vegetables with some ‘chew’ to them, but not crispy because they’re still undercooked.
Once you've done that set them aside. Remove the insides from any meaty sausage of your choice (I used Black Farmer's Pork Sausages) and dry-fry in a non-stick pan. Cook on a medium-low heat and break up the sausage meat with a wooden spoon. Add a splash of white wine once the sausage has all changed colour. Let the meat simmer in the wine for 5-10 minutes, adding a little more wine and then two tablespoons of butter. Let the butter melt into the meat juices and wine and then take it off the heat before they evaporate - we want to use this sauce for the pasta.
Boil and cook the pici - dry pici need a really long cooking time (approx 22 min+) and you should aim to get chewy, cooked-all-the-way-through strands of pici, with no hard centres. You’ll only be able to do this if you keep testing how cooked the pasta is. Just before the the pici look like being cooked, put the meat and wine sauce in your pasta pan and warm, then take it off the heat as you add the pici with a ladle or two of starchy pasta water. Add the zucchini and some chopped parsley and toss everything together until nicely combined.
NB This is a pasta sauce that can benefit from a little extended 2nd stage cooking in the pasta pan with pasta water, even though the version I had in Siena hardly had any mantecatura to it at all... just don't overdo it and make wallpaper paste. Serve immediately with pecorino and black pepper.
NUTRITION per serving
KCAL: 674
Fat (g): 20.2
Sat Fat (g): 8.0
Carb (g): 86.0
Sug (g): 9.0
Fibre(g): 4.4
Prot (g): 29.1
Salt (g): 1.54
Nutritional information is provided as an indication only of approximate values for the recipe on this page. You should make your own calculations if you have specific dietry requirements or are required to follow a strict calorie-controlled diet.
