I guess the title says it all. I first made this years ago, as a result of “Well, what the hell do I have in my fridge?” Since then I’ve tinkered with it, and recently I asked a chef friend of mine how to take it to the next level. He had some good ideas, which I incorporated in to this.
Full disclosure: I haven’t made this exact formulation. I made a batch that came out pretty good, and I’ve incorporated suggestion from that in to this.
Also? It’s a really heavy cream sauce. Very rich. So don’t eat it if you have a heart problem. Actually, probably don’t even read the recipe if you have a heart problem.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds spicy italian sausage, removed from the casing. If you can’t get this exact amount, better to go over than under.
1 large white onion, chopped
1 pound mushrooms, halved.
1/2 pound kalamata olives, or the same amount of green olives, drained.
2 fennel bulbs, just the white parts, with the hard bit at the bottom cut off. Cut them in to thin discs
1/2stick (1/4 cup) butter
1/4 cup flour (to thicken, possibly more because I didn’t keep close track)
1/2 cup parmesan
1 quart heavy cream
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
8 or more cloves of garlic, pressed
Mozzarella to thicken
salt, black pepper, and red pepper to taste
Giardinara or sport peppers to garnish
Directions:
So. Put the sausage, onion and garlic in a large pot and start cooking. Bring to medium heat and begin to brown the meat. After about 10 minutes, add the mushrooms.
Continue cooking, stirring periodically. As the food cooks, you should end up with a large amount of juice and grease in the pot, and the mushrooms should be cooked, at which point the meat should be cooked as well. Rather than cooking off the juices, add the butter and parmesan, as well as the fennel seeds, and stir until the butter is melted.
Add the flour to make a roux, stirring constantly. When the flour is mixed in, add the cream and olives. Return to a boil, and drop in the sliced fennel. If you need to, add mozzarella and flour to thicken the sauce to where you want. Add salt and pepper (it will probably take a lot of salt) to taste, and remove from heat.
Serve over pasta, garnish with giardinara or sport peppers as you like.
eatbensmeat 