Recipe by  Rachel Priestly, The Prodigal Daughter

The Prodigal Daughter won the Paddock Crafted category of the Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards, read more on the awards here. 

This is a simple dish, yet to do it well you need to concentrate. You need to remember these three things:

Use twice as much water to boil the pasta as you think you need.
Salt the water to taste before throwing the pasta in, and taste the water: if the water isn’t tasty the dish will be insipid.
Cook the pasta for three minutes less than you think it needs.

INGREDIENTS

400g rigatoni pasta
2 Prodigal Daughter Spicy Sicilian Sausages
2 zucchini cut into julienne
3 cloves of garlic in their skins
2 large sprigs of mint
Organic salt (from Marlborough)
extra virgin olive oil

METHOD

Bring a huge pot of water to boil, salt to taste (you need about 20g of salt for 4 litres of water). Add the rigatoni. Cook at a rolling boil for about 8 minutes, depending on the size and type of rigatoni. The pasta should be cooked less than al dente, ie, still a bit hard. Drain the pasta and reserve a cup of the salted cooking water.

Meanwhile, heat some extra virgin olive oil in a large pan until the oil ripples. Add the whole crushed garlic cloves in their skins and cook for about 2 minutes, then remove and discard the garlic. This flavours the oil.

Next split the skins on the Spicy Sicilian Sausages, peel and discard skins. Break sausage meat into large crumbs and fry in the hot fragrant oil until brown and cooked. Add the julienne of zucchini and sauté for a further couple of minutes.

Remove from heat, add the drained rigatoni with half a cup of the cooking water and toss in the pan. Put back on the heat and continue to cook for a further two or three minutes, adding more of the cooking water to finish cooking the pasta.

Remove from heat, add freshly chopped mint and finish with generous lashings of extra virgin olive oil.

Buon appetito
Serves 4

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