Gramigna con salsiccia

Frank14 November 2020Emilia-Romagna, pasta, pastas, soups and risottos/primi piatti40 Comments

Gramigna is a delightful curlicue shaped pasta from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The word means Bermuda grass in Italian and I suppose the pasta does rather resemble it, if you make liberal use of your imagination.

There are various ways to dress gramigna, but surely the best known is gramigna con salsiccia, or Gramigna with Sausage. The pasta is tossed in a light but flavorful sauce that starts with sausage meat, crumbled and gently sautéed with a bit of onion in olive oil. You then have two equally delicious options: for a “white” version, you add cream to simmer along with the sautéed sausage, and for a “red” one, some tomato passata.

The red version will take a bit longer, but either one is so quick you’ll have dinner on the table in less than a half hour. Now that’s my kind of fast food!

Ingredients

400g (14 oz) gramigna (see Notes)
250g (1/2 lb) sausage meat, or more to taste
1 small onion, finely minced
A splash of white wine
250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream or passata di pomodoro
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano, to taste

Directions

In a skillet or braiser, gently sauté the minced onion in olive oil until soft and translucent.

Add the sausage meat, which you will have removed from its casings and broken up with a fork. Mix it with the onion and let it, too, sauté gently, breaking it up further, if need be, with a wooden spoon or spatula as it cooks.

When the sausage meat has lost its red color and is just beginning to brown around the edges, pour in a splash of white wine and let it evaporate.

Add the heavy cream or passata and simmer. If using heavy cream, let it simmer for just a minute or two, until the cream has reduced. If using passata, let it simmer until well reduced to sauce-y consistency and the oil separates.

While the sauce is simmering, bring a pot of water to a boil. Salt it well and add the gramigna. Cook until al dente.

When the pasta has cooked, transfer it to sauce, along with a small ladleful of the pasta water, and toss. Simmer until the sauce coats the pasta well.

Serve right away, with grated parmigiano-reggiano for those who want it.

Notes on Gramigna

Gramigna is available online in the US but I’ve never seen it in a store. Funny that it’s not better known on these shores, as it much resembles the elbow macaroni so beloved by Americans. Go figure. And speaking of which, if you don’t want to shell out for gramigna (at $15 per pound, it’s not cheap) then elbows would in fact, make an acceptable substitute, as would small pasta shells, which would catch the sausage bits rather nicely.

It almost goes without saying that your choice of sausage is critical to the dish. Most recipes don’t specify a type, but it does need to be fresh pork sausage. And since this is a Bolognese dish, I would go for a mild “Italian” sausage free of strong flavorings like hot pepper, fennel seeds and so on. If you can source your sausage from an Italian deli that makes their own, so much the better, of course. Truth be told, I haven’t yet found a commercial brand of sausage that I truly like, so have no recs to give…

The sausage to pasta ratio can be as high as 1:1 by weight, depending on how substantial you want your dish to be or as low as 1:2. I found the middle ground listed here worked nicely.

Variations

You can gild the lily by adding a bit of saffron, soaked in warm water, along with the cream (this not for the tomato option) or a sprig of rosemary or other herb for a bit or aroma. For a lighter dish, you could sub the cream for milk, which is sometimes mixed with a bit of tomato concentrate. For lovers of pure flavors, on the other hand, you can also leave out the cream or tomato entirely and just toss the gramigna is the sautéed sausage. It’s also perfectly delicious.

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