Pasta with sweet Italian sausage and other fall goodies

Hope you haven't been holding your breath for recipes featuring parsnips! Those have certainly been few and far between. If you're a parsnips lover and reader of the blog then you may have counted only three featured recipes - Guinness & Beef StewButternut Squash-Pear Bisque and Rigatoni with roasted root vegetables & mascarpone. Well we're here today with a fourth recipe! And after 519 posts that means that parsnips chime in with 0.7% of the posts. Woo parsnips! 

Our apologies to this unassuming root vegetable. We're not too opposed to parsnips but our CSA doesn't offer them so that means I don't go out of my way to get them. But I thought it was about time we threw some love their way; this pasta recipe with sweet Italian sausage, chard, and parsnips seemed exciting and a good reason to buy some parsnips!


Ingredients
Salt and pepper
3/4 pound orecchiette (we substituted whole wheat penne pasta, stocked in the pantry)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3/4 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
1 pound parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch rounds (halved if large)
1 bunch Swiss chard, tough stems and ribs removed, thinly sliced
1/2 cup grated Parmesan (2 ounces), plus more for serving
   Swiss chard and sweet Italian sausage both from our CSA

Directions
   In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions. Reserve 1 cup pasta water, then drain pasta and return to pot.
   In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Add sausage and cook, breaking meat up with a wooden spoon, until browned, 3 minutes. With a slotted spoon, transfer sausage to pot. Add parsnips to skillet and saute until softened and browned, 5 minutes. Add chard and cook until wilted, 2 minutes. Transfer mixture to pot and toss. Add Parmesan and enough pasta water to create a light sauce that coats pasta; season with salt and pepper. Serve with additional Parmesan.


We changed the preparation up a little bit to better utilize our large skillet. Once the sweet Italian sausage had begun to brown, we threw the parsnips into the same skillet. Then we threw in the chard the last few minutes of cooking to wilt it. Finally we tossed in the pasta, pasta water, and cheese. This large skillet was part of our cookware upgrade on the registry and has become one of our go-to cooking pans! We are using it much more than we predicted. It's the Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick 13" Deep Skillet

Are you a parsnips fan?!

I bet you're a cat fan!
Nacho discovering the heat vent!

1 comment:

  1. I think I like parsnips - haven't had in quite a while. Our cats love the heat vents, too.

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