Linguine Ratatouille with Italian Sausage

I've been cooking up a storm this evening. I'm sure you'll see the product in due time. But first, I need to catch up on older posts.

A week or so ago, I picked up a cookbook I hadn't given much attention to since Giz first sent it to me.



When I'm going through a cookbook, I'll usually sit with little sticky notes to mark the pages that look interesting to me. Maybe I was hungry when I sat down to look through this cookbook, but almost half of the pages have been tagged. I'd say that makes for a good cookbook. I think the trick is attractive and plentiful pictures. Like my food blog preferences, I like to see the food. It tells me what kind of product I can expect if I make the recipe (correctly) myself.

Since basil is one of my favourite herbs (parsley is another favourite), I decided to go with Linguine with Rataouille Sauce. I added spicy Italian sausage.

Linguine Ratatouille with Italian Sausage



3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, cut into thin slices
1 green or red bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch dice
1 small eggplant (about 1/2 pound), cut into 1/2 inch dice
1 zucchini (about 1/2 pound), cut into 1/2 inch dice
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 2/3 cups canned cursshed tomatoes in thick puree (one 15 ounce can)
2tsp wine vinegar
3/4 pound linguine
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp thin sliced basic leaves
3 hot Italian sausages

1. Cut up sausage into smaller pieces. Cook the sausage and then remove from pan in order to cook the remaining ingredients.

2. In a large frying pan, heat the oil over moderate heat (I added less oil since there was fat from the sausages remaining). Add the onion and bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the eggplant, zucchini, garlic, salt and black pepper. Reduce the heat to moderately low and cook, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.



3. Add the tomatoes and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the vinegar. Toward the end of the 10 minutes, stir the sausage into the tomato and vegetable mixture.



4. In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the linguine (I used spaghettini) until just done, about 12 minutes. Reserve about 1/2 cup of pasta-cooking water. Drain the pasta and toss with the vegetables, the 1/2 cup basil, and if the pasta seems too dry, some of the reserved pasta-cooking water. Serve topped with 2 tbsp of basil.





I'm submitting this to Ruth's Presto Pasta Night roundup.