A filling pasta dish made with sausages and peas, originally from the Umbria region of Italy to the north of Rome.

Ingredients

• 500g Conchiglie or other short pasta
• 200g large pork sausages
• 400g tinned plum tomatoes
• 150g peas
• 1 glass of white wine
• 1 small onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 40g butter
• Salt and pepper

Preparation

Melt the butter in a large sauce pan, add the finely chopped onion and garlic and cook on a low heat. Once the onion has started to caramelise, add the can of tomatoes and continue to cook gently.

At the same time in a separate covered pan, simmer the sausages in the wine until they are cooked, which should take about 15 minutes. The sausages should be pricked before cooking to allow the fat to drain out of them and into the cooking liquor. Once the sausages are cooked, drain the cooking juices into the pan with the tomatoes and onion. Then skin the sausages, cut them into chunks and leave to one side until later.

Now start to cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet taking care, as ever, to avoid over cooking it.

Add the peas to the tomato sauce and cook until they are tender. Depending upon whether the peas are fresh or frozen this should take between 4 and 7 minutes. Overall the sauce should have cooked for about half an hour, reaching a lovely unctious consistency.

Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce along with the chunks of sausage and give it a really good stir around. Note, unlike seemingly the majority of pasta dishes, this one isn't served with Parmesan cheese.

Serve immediately and enjoy.

Variations

Making a vegetarian version is difficult, as the fat that comes from the pork sausages makes an important contribution to the texture of the final dish. This could be partially overcome by doubling the amount of butter used.

The pasta can be substituted with beans, such as borlotti or pinto beans. This makes it a very different dish, one with a Tuscan feel to it rather than Roman.

This dish is not traditionally served with parmesan cheese. However if the flavour of the sausages that you're using isn't that good, then cheese can be added to beef up the overall flavour.