Hey and welcome back! I am so glad you decided to join me this week because I have a really simple, but tasty meal this week. So, pour a drink and grab a pen and paper to start your grocery list!
All the ingredients for this meal I already had on hand and you may too. If you don’t you can improvise or just go grab the ingredients for this simple take on a household staple dish for years – spaghetti!
For this simple dish you will need the following:
A box of your preference of spaghetti noodle — I used angel hair
1 pound ground Italian sausage
1 large onion diced
2-3 cloves garlic freshly minced
1 large container cherry tomatoes cut in halves — I used a container with red, yellow and purple cherry tomatoes
4 cups fresh spinach — I know it sounds like a lot
Fresh basil — I plucked 3 or 4 small leaves off my basil plant but you can buy yours, too
1 ½ – 2 cups beef broth
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
So now that you have made your list or gathered your items, let’s get started. Put on a pot of water to boil for your noodles. In a sauté pan, pour in the olive oil and cook the Italian sausage. Once the sausage is cooked, remove the sausage from the pan but try to leave the little bit of grease that is left in the pan. Set the sausage aside to be added back later.
By now your pot of water should be boiling so cook the pasta as directed on the package or to your liking. Now add the onion to the pan you cooked the sausage in start stirring to remove any bits left on the bottom of the pan from the sausage. Now add the garlic and continue cooking for about 1 minute, stirring occasionally. Keep an eye that the garlic doesn’t burn. Now add in the tomatoes and basil and let this cook down for about 5 minutes.
Then add in about a half a cup of the broth and stir. This should loosen the last of anything stuck to the pan — there are all kinds of flavor in that. Let this cook down for roughly another 3 or 4 minutes. The tomatoes should be getting really soft at this point and starting to make a sauce and you can add the Italian sausage back to the pan. Now stir in the rest of the broth followed by the spinach and let the spinach cook down until wilted. Lastly, add in the parmesan cheese and stir until it is all incorporated and serve over your pasta!
When I talked to Annie at the Village Wine Shop about a wine pairing for this dish, here is what she had to say “A very nice Chianti, Sangiovese, Shiraz, Brunello, Malbec…..” What? Who are these people?! Italian guys? Sangio who?! Yes, it is confusing and yes, it’s all good! Welcome to the world of grapes and their offspring! With any Italian dish, any Italian guy would let you have it if you didn’t serve one of the above with Gia’s Pasta Pomodoro!!
All of these grape varietals are coveted partners to a beautiful and love-filled, summer pasta dish. To accentuate and bring to the forefront of the palette (your tongue and what you taste) the flavors you need are a big, bold, heavy guy bringing up the flavors from the bottom of the pot. The bold flavors will melt into the arms of the sauce, and please do, pour some in!
The acidity of the tomato will be quelled by the softness and lingering mouthfeel of these big wines. Or the basil will beg for the lighter Chianti to swarm the senses. And the sausage, well, demands a bodyguard of Brunello that will allow the spices to strut their stuff. The Village Wine Shop carries some beautiful Italian wines that allow Lindseys’ creations to shine!”
So, there you have it friends a super easy dish, bursting with flavor that really doesn’t take much time to prepare. You can make this your own by omitting the meat or changing it for a different meat such as ground turkey or ground beef. You can add more veggies if you want, too! No matter what you do, have fun doing it and as always, I am sending love from my kitchen to yours!
