The Capsule Pantry: Salsiccia Con Polenta (Sausage with Polenta) 18+ Ways
The best kind of sauce is sausage sauce
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I want to start this Recipe Wednesday with a note from the Grand Dame of British cooking, Nigella Lawson. As I was nosing one of her books a few weeks back, I was struck by this sentence:
And so I gently remind myself, and you, that the recipe writer’s role is to be a guide in the kitchen, not its ruling monarch
If there were ever 25 words to sum up the spirit of Recipe Wednesday, these are them.
My recipes are not there be followed to the letter, but to be bent and shaped to your will, to what is available in your storecupboard. Because flexibility = less waste = more money = more time = simpler life.
Nigella’s words feed nicely into this week’s recipe of “salsiccia con polenta” - sausage with polenta. I found a recipe for sausage pasta that sounded pretty tasty in a recipe book (it was so long ago, I can’t even remember whose). The sauce was made with Italian fennel sausages, chili flakes, red wine, and cherry tomatoes. I didn’t have red wine open, only white. I had no cherry tomatoes but I did have passata. The sausages I had in the fridge were not fennel flavored, but I did have fennel seeds in my cupboard. No pasta, but I did have polenta.
This was a recipe ripe for adaptation. The result is something I make on an almost weekly basis. There are infinite adaptations you can make to the ingredients which, of course, is the beauty of a recipe like this.
Let’s do it.
The original recipe
For 4 people
For the sauce
8-10 Italian / English sausages, skinned and cut into rough pieces
1 large white onion, finely diced
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp fennel seeds
White wine
1 x 400g carton / 2 cups passata
Chicken stock / vegetable stock / water
Parmesan cheese, grated
For the polenta
75g / half cup polenta
75ml / one third cup / 2.5 fluid oz milk
350ml / 1.5 cups / 12 fluid oz water
25g / 1/8 cup / 1oz each butter and parmesan (or more if you prefer)
Heat up a frying pan, swirl a glug of oil in there and fry the sausage pieces until golden, breaking them up as you go.
Add the onion and fry together gently for 5-10 minutes until the onion has softened.
Add the garlic and fennel seeds and fry for a couple more minutes.
Deglaze using white wine - usually a small glass will do the trick. It should pick up any crispy bits of sausage that may have stuck on the bottom of the pan.
Transfer to a saucepan and add the passata and stir. Then add the water or stock. This is going to simmer for at least an hour so you’ll want at least a cup in there. Season with salt and pepper.
Pop a lid on, check frequently, stir and add more water if required.
After an hour, you should have a thick, rich tomato-sausage-fennel sauce. If it’s too thin, take the lid off and reduce.
To make the polenta, heat up the water, milk and a generous pinch of salt in a saucepan.
When it simmers, add the polenta slowly, stirring all the time.
The mixture will start to thicken, turning into a gloriously gloopy mess. If it becomes lumpy, try using a whisk instead of a wooden spoon. It doesn’t need to simmer for too long, just a few minutes will normally do, until it softens and starts to come away from the sides of the pan. At the end of cooking, add the butter and parmesan, stir in until melted.
Serve the sauce on top of dollops of polenta and grate parmesan over the whole thing.
Adaptations
Pasta
Swap out polenta for pasta, ensuring you reserve some of the cooking water. Drain the pasta, dump it straight into the sauce and mix, adding some of that starchy cooking water whilst keeping the heat on low to loosen the mixture.
Gnocchi
Sausage sauce over gnocchi? Yes please.
Tomatoes
Canned chopped tomatoes work well instead of passata, you’ll need roughly the same amount. Alternatively, you could make your own sauce with halved cherry tomatoes or chopped regular tomatoes. You could simmer for an hour, but you don’t have to - fresh tomatoes are great gently simmered for as long as it takes to make polenta or boil pasta.
Substitute the fennel
As hard as I find it to accept, not everyone loves fennel. This is an easy sub - take it out completely, or swap it for chilli flakes or some herbs (rosemary is good, sage is even better).
Forget the wine
If you don’t drink or you’ve not got any wine you want to sacrifice, you can omit it entirely. Or use white vermouth or red wine if you have it to hand.
Use ground meat instead of sausages
This is exactly what I did yesterday. The market had closed by the time I got there so I went to the store and bought some mixed ground beef and pork - that’s what you see in the picture at the start of this recipe. It turned out great. Lighter meats like pork or turkey would work best.
Make it vegan
Mushrooms are a good sausage substitute here and work well in both the long and short simmer versions. You could also use some Mediterranean vegetables like courgettes, aubergines, or peppers. You can also omit the butter and parmesan in the polenta (or use vegan alternatives).