Crouton’s Pasta with Italian Sausage
Here’s another easy pasta dish anyone can make. It tastes as good as it looks.
Crouton's Pasta with Italian Sausage
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion
- 4 cloves garlic
- Italian sausage (hot or mild), 3 links
- 1 red bell pepper
- broccoli
- black olives
- red pepper flakes
- salt & pepper
- 1 lb pasta
Directions
To prepare:
Chop onion and slice garlic. Cut Italian sausage into 1-inch lengths. Cut bell pepper into wedges, removing seeds and membranes. Cut heads of broccoli from the stem, discard stem.
To cook, do all of the following more or less at the same time, using separate pans:
In a small frying pan, lightly sauté onion & garlic in olive oil. Remove from heat.
In a large frying pan, fry Italian sausage until completely cooked. If there’s a lot of grease or oil after frying the sausage, drain it off. Return cooked sausage to pan and add onion & garlic, including the olive oil you used to sauté it in.
Add bell pepper to sausage, onion, and garlic. Add black olives. Add salt, pepper, and a few red pepper flakes to taste. Cook over low to medium heat until peppers are just done.
In a pot, boil or steam broccoli until just cooked. Remove from heat and set aside.
In another pot, boil the pasta until al dente.
Drain pasta when cooked, put in serving bowl. Add sausage & bell pepper mix, toss all. Place broccoli on top.
Notes
I’ve tried this with both kalamata olives and canned black olives. The strong flavor of the kalamatas overpower the bell pepper and broccoli, so I recommend using regular canned olives. I prefer hot Italian sausage; others may prefer mild (and if you prefer mild, you probably won’t want to add the red pepper flakes either). For the pasta, use something big — rigatoni, penne, rotini, etc. Crusty French or Italian bread, dipped in olive oil, goes well with this meal.
