One of my friends – Nina Septoe, told me about this recipe a while back and I can’t get enough of it. So much so, that I make it at least once a month. This recipe uses really simple ingredients to get a surprisingly authentic tasting Italian dish.
Creamy Tomato Pasta with Mini Meatballs:
Ingredients:
- 1/2 packet Woolies Dhania Beef sausage (See tips below for more variations)
- Garlic
- Chilli Flakes/Powder/Dried (optional)
- 250ml Cream
- 1/2 tin chopped tomato’s
- Spinach Leaves
- Cooked Pasta (any shape)
- Parmesan Cheese or any other cheese to sprinkle over
Method:
- In a pan heat a little bit of oil (1Tb). Squeeze the meat out of the sausage casing and roll into mini meatballs with your hands. I do this straight into the pan for laziness reasons. They’re not perfectly round but that’s part of the charm.
- Brown the meatballs and add some garlic. Add half a tin of chopped tomato and a tub of cream. Then add seasoning – I usually add a few tsp on chilli flakes as the dhania sausage is flavoured pretty well already.
- Reduce the sauce by half. This part is purely up to your individual taste. If you want a dry pasta reduce it more, if you want it creamy don’t reduce it that much.
- Add your cooked pasta, some spinach leaves and sprinkle grated cheese over the top before you eat.
- Enjoy!
Tips:
I keep dhania sausage in the freezer specifically for this dish. I only use half a packet at a time as I am cooking for two people. This makes enough for supper and are perfect leftovers to take to work for lunch the next day. As it is quite rich, portion sizes can be kept small.
A healthier alternative for the meat would be ostrich sausages or chicken breasts. If you want to make it vegetarian, use mushrooms and olives (Feta works especially well with the veg combo). You can even swop the cream/tomato ratio and do more tomato (1 tin) and less cream (1/2 tin).
Any type of tinned tomato’s work for this dish. I have also used tomato and onion mix on occasion. If you only have fresh tomato, use 2-3 tomato’s, de-seeded and chopped with a little bit of tomato puree or paste. If you don’t have that use 1 Tb of Tomato Sauce.
