Sausage, Fennel and Tenderstem Broccoli Pasta

aka. your new favourite pasta

Every single year, at this time of the year in the UK, the same thing happens, without fail. We have one gorgeous weekend, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, the air is filled with the chirruping of both birds and ice cream vans. Coats get packed into attics, BBQs dusted off and the excitement is palpable. And then. The weather turns and we realise it’s actually still very much Winter.

In fact 7 years ago this is the time of the year when we had the Beast from the East. Do you remember that? I remember vividly as that was just before my wedding and a huge ice blizzard hadn’t been on the cards for the lovely Spring wedding we had planned. But I digress. Today was bitterly cold and having stood in the freezing cold watching my children play tennis doing my best Judy Murray impression, I made this for lunch. Yes even though I’ve made this three times over the past 10 days I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted something hot and comforting but flecked with hints of lightness and green. It's a good chilly spring recipe, if you will.

Now I love sausage pasta. Any form, any type. But I really love this one. It’s light and fresh which is a weird thing to say about a sausage pasta but cook it and you will see. Here’s the thing - using sausage meat is such a good base for pasta sauces. It’s a kind of a hack as the meat is already flavoured and it’s fatty (in the best way). This means the sausages sizzle in the pan in their rendered fat and turn super crispy - this is important. You will get a golden crispy ‘fond’ on the bottom of the pan, which is just the brown crispy bits that stick to the pan. Fond just means bottom in French, so it’s the bottom of the pan really. Once you add the wine, and a good scraping with your wooden spoon, it unsticks these golden crispy bits which gives FLAVOUR. So much flavour. That’s why I love sausage pasta. No matter what else you put with it, it will always be delicious.

I’ve written this recipe with fennel seeds and fresh fennel which both provide a different kind of fennel flavour. You can skip the fennel seeds if you use sausages that are flavoured with fennel - that’s another nice little time saver. I love tenderstem broccoli for some greenery and a good dollop of mascarpone. It comes together in under 30 minutes (as always) and I would honestly make double because it’s just that good. Heated up for lunch the next day, yes please.

The full recipe is below for paid subscribers (along with a handy PDF version). You also get access to helpful notes on the recipe in case you want to make it vegetarian friendly, or you’re feeding more people and want to scale up easily. Perhaps you’re feeding the whole family? It’s all covered in the Notes.

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This recipe serves 2 people generously. The recipe is very easily doubled, you just need a larger pan!