Italian Sausage Fra Diavlo over Caveman Fettucini!

I was craving Italian sausage last night, so I defrosted some organic ground pork, and attempted to make my own.  I had all the ingredients in the house, so all I was missing was the casing.  I don't have a sausage maker anyway, so I had to figure out some other way to hold its shape.  No worries, it worked out great!  And another perfect opportunity to experiment with my zucchini pasta!

First, I added spices to the pork, which had about 20% fat, yummy, and no, not bad for you at all (I'm so sick of talking about fat to you lazy bastards, so look up the info yourselves in my previous blog entries).  Fresh ground black pepper, fresh minced garlic, fresh thyme, onion powder, and plenty of fennel seeds and crushed red pepper (I love REALLY HOT Italian sausage!).  Very simple recipe, not too many ingredients (all ingredients, all organic, all the time).  Mixed it all together (use your hands, it's the best tool for mixing, but wash them first, you filthy bastards), and formed them into links.

Then I browned them in my cast iron skillet in olive oil.  They held their shape beautifully!  Next I set out to make the sauce.  It was going to be a real simple tomato sauce, do to my leftovers.  Usually I like to make a chunky marinara sauce, using whole crushed tomatoes, slow cooked over many hours.  But I had an open jar of the organic strained tomatoes I used to make my Buffalo Wing Hot Pepper Sauce the other night, so I had to use it up.  I reached for an onion to chop it up and start my sauce, when I realized I still had some of the hot sauce left over too!  In fact, if you remember from my last blog about hot wings, I was contemplating straining all the little bits of garlic, celery, red jalapeno, and red onion, but I was too lazy.  Finally, being a lazy bastard paid off for me!  I threw all the leftover hot sauce into the pan, added the leftover strained tomatoes, and some oregano, and suddenly I had Fra Diavlo sauce!  Fra Diavlo means "Brother Devil" in Italian, because of it's hot and spicy flavor.  Some call it Arrabbiata sauce, which means "angry," but I think Fra Diavlo is specifically made with whole peppers (like the red jalapenos I used) and Arrabbiata is made with crushed red pepper flakes.   I let the browned sausages simmer in the spicy sauce for 40 minutes.  From a simple tomato sauce meal, I used leftovers to make an amazing Fra Diavlo sauce!  Like I always say, your home menus are only limited by your pantry, your super market, and your imagination!

While it cooked, I sliced the zucchini.  I don't own a mandolin slicer to make perfect shapes, so I just used my peeler, and sliced long strips of zucchini, about the size of fettucini.  Now in the past, I've gotten it to look like pasta (the strips of zucchini peel looked like spinach fettucini), but it never quite had the texture of pasta.  So this time I figured if I don't cook it, like I've done in the past, the texture might be a little more "al dente," if you will.  And it worked.  I just did a quick dip into the tomato sauce, and plated it.  The zucchini softened slightly, but wasn't mushy at all like zucchini can get when you cook it.  Then I plated the sausage and tell me this doesn't look like a real pasta dish:

It does, right?  And although it doesn't taste like pasta, it definitely had the texture, and twirled on my fork beautifully!  Also, since to me zucchini doesn't have much flavor anyway, the sauce really stood out, and this was the closest I've come to the pasta experience so far.  People keep telling me to try spaghetti squash, and I will at some point, but for now, this works!  I can now re-create pasta dishes without using grains, like wheat or rice, and still feel satisfied like I'm eating pasta!  I'm going to buy a slicer one day and try to cut the zucchini a little finer into linguine or spaghetti, and I bet I'll be even more satisfied.  By the way, not only the sauce and the pasta were fantastic, but the sausages came out perfectly!!!!  Italian sausage made with organic pork and zero salt.  Italian grandmothers are rolling around in their graves right now.  But the salt in their sausages probably helped put them in their graves, and the lack of salt in mine, will keep me out of the grave for a while (I hope).  Trust me, if you use pure, fresh ingredients, the flavors will explode and you will not miss salt.  You might miss pasta, but keep experimenting like I did, and you can recreate any unhealthy dish into a healthy one!  Ugga-Bugga!