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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Freezer and Pantry Spring Cleaning Recipe: Rao's Sausage, Cabbage, Tomato Sauce for Pasta

Notes from a crazed stockpiler of food: You don't save money by stockpiling food on sale UNLESS and UNTIL you use it. That message is directed to me, by the way.

I've never quite succeeded in a total clean out, but once again I am embarking on the journey. I have a bunch of sausage that was $1/lb. I also found a sad looking cabbage in my fridge (but cabbage lasts pretty much forever). I typed the two keywords and perused the offerings. This is what I made. It is from the Rao's Cookbook. Needless to say, I used my own olive oil, pasta, and a big can of tomatoes.

1 lb. Rao’s Penne Pasta
1 jar of Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce
1/4 cup of Rao’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4 cloves garlic, peeled and mashed
1 pound Italian sausage, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 pound savoy cabbage, cooked and chopped into bite-sized pieces
Salt and Pepper to taste
Freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese (optional)

Heat Rao’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil and garlic in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add sausage, and sauté until meat is cooked.

Add cabbage, salt and pepper to taste, and sauté for an additional 1-2 minutes. Stir in 3 cups of Rao’s Marinara Sauce, and cook for 3-5 minutes, until flavors have blended.

Meanwhile, cook Rao’s Penne pasta in a large pot of rapidly boiling salted water until al dente. Drain pasta and return to the pot with ½ cup of sauce. Stir for one minute over high heat. Place on a serving platter and pour remaining sauce on top. Sprinkle with Pecorino Romano cheese, if desired.


Rao's is a famous restaurant, frequented by celebrities and gangsters (according to lore). It is impossible to get a table. Not that I've tried.

Even though I discovered the recipe on-line, I have the cookbook. It is full of Italian-American home-style dishes. I grew up around a lot of people who ate this kind of food. I made the full amount, which supposedly serves 4 as a main dish. Mr. FS and I, big eaters, ate this twice and still have a ton left over.

I should have remembered: like Jewish cooking, Italian cooking is known for HUGE portions.

6 comments:

Duchesse said...

Once you have the sausage in the tomato sauce, you can throw pretty much anything in that big pot of flavour.

When we moved, we discovered we had decades worth of "fancy stuff", the kind of thing people bring to your home, like raspberry-papaya vinegar. We gave away or trashed so much. Worth remembering when we visit people- the plain things get eaten, the weird gourmet stuff does not.

Anonymous said...

This sounds like the sort of thing we would like. We are big fans of cabbage.

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Frugal Scholar said...

@Duchesse--True to the sausage and....but I hadn't thought of adding cabbage till I read the recipe. Also true about all the gourmet type items--vinegar all tastes pretty much the same. Or am I wrong?

@terri--Love cabbage. It's on sale this week for St Patrick's Day.

Shelley said...

I grew up eating sauerkraut and loving it, but Bill thinks it's vile. We do occasionally eat cabbage, but though it is inexpensive it is one veg we haven't learned to love. Must work on that, even if it means eating meat a bit more often. I love cabbage rolls, but it occurs to me that your stew accomplishes similar flavours without the fiddliness.