Gramigna with sausage sauce

This is a Bolognese classic, on the menu of almost every restaurant. It’s hard to think of a simpler or tastier pasta dish. Preparation time: a blink. This works very well with a good, wholesome English sausage, either plain pork or flavoured. Gramigna is curly macaroni but you could use garganelli as a substitute.

Ingredients (for 4)

400g gramigna
450g pork sausages
125g bacon
1 large onion
1 garlic clove
175ml white wine
75ml passata
2 tablespoons olive oil
50g parmesan
salt and pepper
Plus optional flavourings – fennel seeds, thyme or chilli for example


Method

1. Put the pasta water on to boil (yes, it’s that quick).
2. Make an incision down the centre of each sausage and remove the skin, then cut each sausage into eighths.
3. Cut the bacon into small cubes.
4. Hear a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil and begin to fry the sausage and the bacon.
5. Finely chop an onion and a garlic clove and add them to the sausage and bacon when they begin to brown.
6. When the onion begins to brown, add a glass of white wine and cook off the alcohol.
7. Season to taste, and add perhaps some fennel seeds or thyme, or a chopped up red chilli or another flavouring that takes your fancy.
8. Add the tomato passata.
9. Put the pasta on to cook.
10. When it’s cooked, drain it and add it to the sausage sauce and cook together in the pan for a minute or so.

Serve with grated parmesan.