Two Pasta Dishes

I should go to Moen's more often. I suspect the reasons I don't is my bank balance and my chronic inability to resist foodie goodies. God has clearly written me off as an atheist as if he didn't want to lead me into temptation then he'd never have let me walk passed this fabulous shop two or three times a week. I am, as they say, like a kid in a sweet shop.

I did well, though, yesterday, escaping having bought what I went in for and nothing else. The sausages were huge, an inch or more thick and a foot in length. Deep purple-red and smelling sweetly of fennel they were just what I wanted for supper. Rigatoni con pomodoro e salsiccia is a wonderful dish, a more exciting version of Spag Bol with a fancy-dan name and several layers of extra flavour. It's basically just a ragu but using those brilliant sausages split open and broken up rather than boring old mince. Slow cooked with wine and tomatoes until thick, dry and concentrated, before being enriched with cream and nutmeg, it makes a deeply comforting meal and a little goes a long way. Those four oversized sausages would have fed six hungry people.

The inspiration had come from a Friday visit to Jen's local Italian in Hammersmith and a chance to eat their parpadelle al lepre - thick, wide pasta ribbons with a sweet, gamey hare sauce. One of the great things about this place is the chance to eat a classic Italian dish that you have read about but never tried. Last time, it was a classic osso buco with risotto milanese, this time the hare. The sausage was loose and wet, like a sloppy gravy, and flavoured well by the humble carrot. It's soft sweetness adding to the meaty hare. It reminded Jen of the veal breast and carrots we ate in Paris the day after the wedding last year. A case of the soffrito becoming the star. Boiled beef and carrots may be great, slow cooked hare and carrots with silky, expertly made homemade pasta might just be even better.