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I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy cooking.

I like eating but the process, taking raw ingredients and forming it into something for people to enjoy. It’s also extremely relaxing for me. Put me into the kitchen after a stressful day or week at work and within 15 minutes I’m a happier person.

This evening, as I usually do on Saturdays, I took to the kitchen again. On the menu a pasta and ground beef dish. But this time I took a sausage which we sell at the butchery where I work and cut the meat out of the casing. The sausage contains beef, chili and cheese. When you eat it as a sausage it is delicious – not a very hot heat but more spicy which makes it suitable for a lot of people.

As a ground beef, with the cheese mixed in it makes a wonderful companion for pasta. Especially when the cheese starts to melt and gives you a much thicker sauce than normal.

The Recipe

• Two tomatoes
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Teaspoon ( +/-) of ground pepper
• Oil for frying
• Pasta, roughly 300g (or as much as you like : ) )
• Sausage, about 400g worth
• Half a can of tomato relish [ -_- I bought some, perhaps next time I will make my own ]

Pasta into some hot water. I wait until I get a rolling boil on the water and I add a teaspoon of oil in. It is said to stop the pasta sticking to each other but I’ve found frequent stirring also stops it from happening.

While the pasta boils I place a pan onto a low heat and the two diced tomatoes into the pan. I didn’t have any onions but the recipe didn’t lack anything due to no onions. The tomatoes are fried¹ until they are soft enough to be squished by the spatula or wooden spoon you are using. Once this happens I add the meat (cut from the casing) and start to cook that in the tomato juices. Normally I would fry the meat until it has a nice color to it but in this case the cooking does the job and you can get away with a gently fry (of the meat).

I add in half of the tomato relish and a teaspoon of sugar. This particular brand of relish is really bitter if you don’t add sugar and spoils the taste of the food. I also added a teaspoon of sugar on the tomatoes before they went into the pan. When the pasta is ready I drain it and dump the shells into the meat and tomato mix. Stir it around for a few minutes before serving.

A few images of the finished product.

tl;dr

Try using a sausage instead of ground beef next time you cook pasta. The additional ingredients (spices, or cheese in this case) can make a big difference to the meal.

Thanks for reading : )

1. I say fry but I think they cook first before they start to fry. ↩︎