Speedy Sausage Pasta

As you will have seen in many of the other recipes on my site, I love using sausage meat as a cheap, quick and easy way to make a filling and tasty tea and this recipe is exactly that. Whacking everything into a blender right at the start means both minimal chopping and means that rustling up this dish doesn’t take much longer than cooking the pasta. This is also a great dish to make for little ones as blending everything disguises many of the veggies that you may find hard to get into their meals usually and you end up with a bolognaise type texture for the sauce which always goes down a storm.

The veggies I’ve included below make for a lovely dish however if you have any other veggies, feel free to experiment. I’ve also flavoured the dish with one of my favourite combos, paprika and fennel but if you prefer other spices, feel free to mix things up!

I’ve made a little video to go along with this recipe, I hope you find it useful!

Speedy Sausage Pasta

Serves 4 = 9sp per serving on BLUE, PURPLE and GREEN (3sp on PURPLE if made with whole-wheat pasta)

Ingredients

240g pasta, dried

4 x reduced fat pork sausages (I used Tesco’s own which are 3sp each), sausage meat removed from skin and skin discarded

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped

1 chilli, roughly chopped

1 carrot, peeled and roughly diced

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp paprika

1 tbsp tomato puree

125ml white wine (optional)

1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 chicken stock cube

15g parmesan

Crushed chillies to taste (I use 2 tsp)

Method

Blend vegetables until you have a relatively smooth paste. Add the sausage meat to the blender and pulse until the sausage is combined with the vegetables.

Spray the pan with 1kal and add the contents of the blender, beginning to fry on a medium heat.

Grind 2 tsp of fennel seeds until they are a fine powder. Add 2 tsp of paprika and the ground fennel to the pan. Season with salt and pepper and a splash of water if the pan gets a little dry.

Pop the pasta on to cook.

Add 1 tbsp tomato puree to the sauce (and the wine if you are having it at this point too). Stir to combine and simmer for a few minutes (to reduce the wine if you have added it).

Add the chopped tomatoes to the pan. Crumble the chicken stock cube into the tomato tin, fill with boiling water and stir to dissolve, then add the stock/water to the pan.

Let the sauce simmer for 10 minutes until it starts to reduce and thicken and then add the grated parmesan and crushed chillies.

Season to taste. Add 1 tsp balsamic vinegar and stir.

Drain the pasta and add to the sauce. Stir to combine.

Serve with an extra sprinkle of parmesan.

Enjoy!