Broccoli Sausage Pasta

A friend of mine (the one who has taken great pictures of food for me in previous posts) went out of town this week. She had some produce that was going to go bad and so she asked me if I wanted to take it off her hands. Which OF COURSE I did!!! So a head of broccoli was one of the items she handed me and I thought it would be a tasty treat to make it for dinner in some kind of pasta dish. So I searched for recipes and came across this from Running With Tweezers! It sounded tasty and quick to throw together so I thought I would give it a whirl. My husband and I actually have company staying with us for a couple weeks, and she liked the dish a lot! My husband and I will have to for sure make this one again, it was so tasty and so easy!

Broccoli Sausage Pasta

(recipe from Running With Tweezers)

1 lb. ground Italian sausage
1 16 oz. Piccolini (mini Farfalle)
12 oz. fresh broccoli - rinsed, dried and cut into florets
1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon to use for zest
1 tsp. dried red chili flakes
fresh ground salt and pepper, to taste
freshly grated Parmesan cheese, optional

Fill large pasta pot with water and heat until water is at rolling boil. Add pasta to water and cook according to product directions. About 3 minutes before pasta is done, add the broccoli florets. They will blanch quickly in the pasta water. When pasta is cooked, drain and set aside.

While pasta is cooking, crumble sausage in a large skillet into large chunks and begin to brown. Let them brown and caramelize in the pan. When thoroughly browned and cooked through, DO NOT DRAIN THE FAT. This is your sauce.

Pour cooked and drained pasta & broccoli back into the pasta pot and add the sausage, including the oil and such at the bottom of the skillet. Drizzle the mixture with the teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil and mix thoroughly. If the pasta is too dry for your liking, add olive oil as desired. Sprinkle red chili flakes on pasta. Zest lemon over pasta and add salt and pepper to taste then mix all the ingredients together one last time. Grate Parmesan over the pasta before serving. Serve immediately.