My Tagliatelle with Sausage and Fennel

I was inspired to create this recipe as it was one of my favourite dishes from ‘Jamie’s Italian’ restaurant, which is sadly no longer. However, I think this recipe is not far off the original!

The base of the sauce is a traditional style, very similar to a Bolognese, so it’s a good one to modify to make it your own. If you like hot sauces – add chilli flakes. If you want a more Neapolitan (more tomato-ey) sauce, then add more tomatoes (adding fresh plum tomatoes would be great).

One I would suggest is to use good quality sausage (with more than 85% pork content) as anything lower will not create a good sauce.

Ingredients

Serves 3-4

Around 400g of Tagliatelle/Fettucine/Parpadelle pasta

200g of Pancetta

6 high quality pork sausages (around 85% + Pork) taken out of their skins and the sausage meat finely crumbled.

1 celery stalk, finely diced

1 large carrot finely diced

1 large white onion, finely diced

175ml dry white wine (preferably Pinot Grigio / Chablis/ Sauvignon blanc)

1 tin of chopped tomatoes or 400ml of passata (if you use only 3 tbsp of tomato puree)

5 tbsp of Tomato puree

1 tsp fennel seeds

1tsp fresh chopped sage (if there isn’t any sage in the sausages)

1 tsp of dried chili flakes (if you would like it spicy)

1 ltr of Chicken stock

200ml of milk

3 tbsp of Olive oil

30g of butter

Salt and pepper to season

Parmesan and chopped parsley to garnish

Method

• Heat 2 tbsp. of the olive oil and the butter in the pan on a medium heat

• Add the pancetta until softened, then add the carrot, celery and onion.

• Cook for around 4-5 mins until softened, then add the crumbled sausage meat to the pan

• Cook for around 8 mins, until the sausage meat is cooked, and then add the wine.

• Let the wine bubble off for up to 5 mins, and then add the tomato puree (and chopped tomatoes or passata if you are using them) and then fill with around 200ml of chicken stock and the milk (this will help to soften the meat).

• Add the fennel, (sage and chili also if necessary) season, and bring to the boil.

• Once bubbling, turn to a lower heat and let simmer for up to 4 hours (one or two hours is fine if you don’t have the time), stirring occasionally and adding more chicken stock if necessary.

• Around 15 mins before serving time, cook the pasta in boiling water with salt to al dente. Add a little drop of milk to the sauce to loosen it slightly. Drain and add the pasta to the sauce, add the parmesan and parsley and serve. Buon Appetito!!!