When I have a random sampling of ingredients in the fridge and I don’t know what I want to make for dinner, usually right before I need a grocery store run, I turn to making a pasta dish. A few veggies here, a meat of some kind there, pasta from the pantry and voila dinner is ready!  I found this special pasta shape called Trotolle, Italian for little top like the kind kids spin around, in the +Jacksonville Mercantile while shopping with my visiting friends Jessica and Evan. The store in Jacksonville, Oregon was replete with dried pastas, dipping sauces, flavored salts, and every special little ingredient or food speciality one could desire.

©EverydayCookingAdventures 2014

This recipe is by famed chef, cookbook author, and restaurant owner, Lidia Bastianich whom I have been a fan of for a decade now. After visiting her restaurant in Kansas City, aptly named Lidia’s, I bought one of her cookbooks and have been following her on +PBS Food. She is a wonderful Italian cook and make everything look effortless and enticingly scrumptious. While I subbed this Trotolle for the ziti and sliced my sausage into rounds instead of crumbling it, this recipe hit the mark. Here’s my Italian pasta:

Lidia Bastianich Pasta with Sausage, Onions and Fennel ©EverydayCookingAdventures 2014

Ziti with Sausage, Onions, and Fennel

Recipe from: “Lidia’s Family Table” by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Serves: 3 servings (2 people plus leftovers)

Ingredients
For the Sauce

• 1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage, without fennel seeds
• 1/2 large fennel bulb, with stem and fronds
• 2 1/2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 tsp. peperoncino (red pepper flakes)
• 1 cup onion, sliced into half-moons
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup tomato paste

For the Pasta and Finishing

• 1/2 Tbsp. kosher salt, for the pasta cooking water
• 1/2 pound ziti
• 2 1/2 Tbsp. fennel fronds, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup Pecorino Romano, freshly grated

Directions
1. Heat 3 quarts of water with kosher salt to boiling in the pasta cooking pot. Meanwhile, remove the sausage from its casing and break the meat up a bit with your fingers.

2. Trim the fennel bulb. Slice just one half into 1/4″ thick lengthwise slices. Save the other half in a plastic resealable bag for another time. Separate the slivers of fennel if they are attached at the bottom so you have about 1 1/2 cups of 2″ long matchsticks of fennel.

3. Pour olive oil into the skillet and set over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook, stirring and breaking it up more with a wooden spoon, until sizzling and beginning to brown, about 1-1/2 minutes. Push the sausage a bit aside and drop the onion into the pan; sauté, stirring another 2 minutes then stir them in with the meat.

4. Clear a space and drop in the fennel; let it heat up for 1 minute, then stir it around with the sausage and onions. Sprinkle on 1/4 tsp. salt; drop the red pepper flakes in and toast for 1/2 minute, then stir them in.

5. Clear a good-sized spot in the center of the pan, plop in the tomato paste and cook, stirring it in the spot for a minute or two, until it is sizzling and caramelizing; then stir it in with everything else. Ladle 1 cup of boiling pasta water from the pot into the skillet, stir well and bring to a boil. Simmer for 6 minutes. The sauce should not get too thick: stir in another cup or 2 of boiling pasta water, if it reduces rapidly. When the sauce is done, taste it and add more salt if you want.

6. Meanwhile, drop the ziti in the boiling water in the pasta pot. Stir and bring back to the boil. Cook about 8 minutes (a minute less than what is recommended on the package) until the ziti are not quite al dente. As soon as the ziti are ready, drop into the simmering sauce. Toss pasta and sauce together; ladle in more water if the sauce seems too thick.

7. Sprinkle the chopped fennel fronds over top and continue to cook and toss the ziti in the skillet for 2 minutes or until they are perfectly al dente and coated with sauce. If the pasta appears dry, ladle in more hot pasta water; if it is soupy, cook rapidly to thicken the sauce. Remove the skillet from the heat, sprinkle the grated cheese over the ziti, and toss it in. Serve the hot pasta right from the skillet into warm pasta bowls.