Farfalle Leonardo

Farfalle Leonardo 

This recipe was found under the P tab for pasta. 

I'm Italian and love pasta so I couldn't resist the opportunity to try this recipe. Plus I love these little bow tie shapes!  The recipe is fairly simple and puts a bit of a twist on a regular red pasta sauce. My mother never made this one either, but it looks like another cut out from a newspaper. Some of the comments within the recipe are humorous. You can see for yourself below:

Farfalle Leonardo

1 Pound bulk sausage

1 Large onion, chopped (1 cup)

1 Clove garlic, minced

1 Can (1 pound) tomatoes

1 Teaspoon leaf oregano, crumbled

1 Teaspoon leaf basil, crumbled

1 Teaspoon salt

1/8 Teaspoon pepper

1 Package (8 ounces) farfalle

½ Cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Flatten sausage meat into a large patty in a large skillet.

Brown on one side; turn and brown on second side. Remove

sausage from skillet and crumble onto paper towels.

2. Drain off all but 2 tablespoons of fat in skillet. Sauté onion

and garlic in skillet until soft. Drain tomatoes; reserve liquid.

Brown tomatoes in same skillet for 5 minutes. (This is an Italian

cooking trick for a tomato sauce with special flavor.)

3. Return crumbled sausage to skillet with liquid from canned

tomatoes, oregano, basil, salt and pepper. Simmer, stirring

occasionally, 30 minutes.

4. Cook farfalle, following label directions, until done as you

like pasta. Drain and place on large heated serving platter. Spoon

sauce over and top with Parmesan cheese. Toss at the table and

serve at once.

Don't worry about finding bulk sausage. You can either use the ones that are in the casing and take them out or just used the ground sausage meat. I found the ground meat and used a sweet kind. Feel free to use spicy sausage if you'd like. Also, we usually have Romano on hand so I used that instead of the Parmesan. If you aren't afraid of garlic I would also recommend using more than one clove in the recipe. Let's get cooking! 

The first thing I would start with is bring the water to a boil for your pasta. Make sure you use a large enough pan. 

Before we start cooking you will want to chop the onion and garlic so when you need to put it in the pan it is ready. Start by cutting both the bottom and the top of the large onion off and peeling away the skin. 

Then chop it into somewhat small pieces so it will cook easily. 

Next, do the same to the garlic by cutting off the top and bottom of each clove and peeling away the skin. 

Depending on how much you like garlic you can adjust the size of the cuts you make. I like garlic, but I don't like to bite into big chunks of it when I'm eating so I chopped mine fairly small. 

Now that your chopping is done you can go ahead and get a pan for the sausage. Make sure it is large enough to hold the sausage and tomatoes. Then turn it on to medium heat and get your sausage ready. 

If you are using the sausage with a casing be sure to remove the casing before cooking it. You can follow the original directions in which the recipe tells you to form a patty with the sausage for cooking. I just left the whole rectangle together and placed it in the pan. 

While that starts to cook down you can prepare your tomatoes. You will want to separate the juice from the actual tomatoes in the can. You can do this by using a strainer or by picking each tomato out of the juice. 

When the sausage is brown on the bottom go ahead and flip it over. I started to break mine up in the pan so I could assure that it was cooking all the way through before putting it on to the paper towel. 

When the sausage is brown on both sides it is ready to come out of the pan and on to the paper towel. The best way to do this is to place two pieces of paper towel on a plate and spoon the sausage onto it. 

The pan will have some left over oil in it, but that is what you will use to cook the rest of the ingredients. If you have more than 2 tablespoons of oil left in the pan then drain off the excess. I didn't even end up with a tablespoon. 

When your pan is ready go ahead and add your chopped onion and garlic. 

Yum! If you weren't hungry before the smell of cooking garlic has to have your tummy growling! Let these cook until the onion is translucent. Make sure the garlic doesn't burn. 

Once the onions and garlic are cooked to your liking go ahead and add the tomatoes only. (Leave the liquid for later). Cook the tomatoes for about 5 minutes in the pan. I cut mine into smaller pieces in the pan since they were rather large. 

While the tomatoes cook you can go ahead and cut up your sausage into small pieces if you haven't already. 

When your tomatoes have been cooking for about 5 minutes go ahead and add the sausage back to the pan and mix it in well. 

Then add the tomato sauce to the pan and stir that in until well mixed. 

When the tomato sauce is combined well go ahead and add the seasonings of oregano, basil, salt and pepper. 

Mix the seasonings all together into the sauce and let it cook for about 30 minutes. This will help the sauce thicken and let the flavors develop. 

When there is about 10 minutes left until the sausage sauce is done you can start cooking the farfalle. Before putting the pasta in the water make sure you salt the water well. 

When the pasta is in the water be sure to give it a good stir occasionally to ensure the farfalle aren't sticking to each other. 

After about 8 or 9 minutes you can check if the farfalle is done by scooping one up and tasting it. If it's not too hard for your liking you can go ahead and dump the pan into a strainer and then place the farfalle in a dish. 

Make sure your sauce is done at the same time because the farfalle will stick together if you leave it out without sauce too long. Go ahead and pour the sauce over the pasta. 

Mmmm! Mix it all together in the bowl before serving. You can add the cheese to the entire dish or let each person put it on their own. 

Yum!! This recipe was really simple and had great flavor! I gave it a 5 out of 5 on the yummy scale! 

I highly recommend giving this recipe a try! You can mix it up with different kinds of sausages if you like and also different shapes of pasta. Definitely don't pass this one up!