CSA Sauce

Ingredients

The base:
Olive oil
Crushed red pepper
5 cloves garlic, crushed
one medium to large onion, finely chopped
One 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, chunk the tomatoes and keep the juice from the can
½ cup cream, or what ever is left in the bottom of the half-and-half carton
¼ cup grated sharp Italian table cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano will work. I like a not-quite-so-sharp Italian cheese that I get at Cardona's. I'll get the name as soon as I can.

One package chicken sausage

On chicken sausage…I like Bilinski’s feta and spinach, grill them and then cut into little chunks. If that seems like too much work, just pan-fry them. Somehow or another you need a bunch of cooked chicken sausage, cut into little slices or chunks.
(If you are the planning type, you could BBQ one night and cook some extra chicken sausages. Then you could pull them out the next night for this sauce. That would make it even easier for a mid-week, just-got-home-from-work meal.)

The fun part:
Take one long look at that pile of green stuff from the farm share. Then grab something and start chopping.

My favorites for this sauce (because this is what I used last time, so for the moment they are my favorites) are:

Beet greens and/or chard, about four cups, rinsed well and chopped fine
Summer squash, one, thin slices
Zucchini, one, thin slices
Basil, one handful, chopped fine
Flat-leaf parsley, handful, chopped fine

Other good veggies would be spinach, green beans, especially Roma, fresh tomatoes, broccoli rabe (you might wan to blanche this first), any other leafy green.

Instructions:
Remember, I am cooking for six, or, to tell the truth, the way my children are eating right now, it seems more like eight. The exact amounts aren’t that important here. It is hard to go wrong as long as you have the base.

Prep veggies as specified above. Put large pan of water on to boil for pasta. Cook and slice sausage. You can grill the sausage while making the first part of the sauce if you like, especially if they are the precooked kind and you are really just heating and charring them.

Now for the sauce…
Pour a deep coating of olive oil into a deep frying pan. Heat till it is fragrant. Add crushed red pepper and garlic. Allow it to sizzle for a moment and release into the oil, but do not brown.

Add the onion. Stir to coat with oil. Let it cook till it is soft and translucent. Add the other veggies. If you are using summer squash or zucchini add these first and cook for a few minutes before adding the greens.

Add the cooked sausage, tomatoes (add the chunked tomatoes and the rest of the juice from the can) and basil. Simmer for about 10 minutes.

When water boils add 1 pound fettuccine.

When the pasta is about 3-5 minutes from being al dente, pour cream into sauce. Mix well and heat, but don’t cook for a long time. By this time, I’ve usually got a full pan of sauce (in my huge deep frying pan. If you need more liquid, you could add ¼ to ½ cup of the pasta water.

At the end, stir in the grated cheese. Adjust seasoning, salt and pepper to taste. Add parsley if you have it.

Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce. Serve will good bread and watch your children eat beet greens.