Muscle memory and blind faith—Penne with Fresh Tomato Sauce

Basil, garlic and Italian sausage help you make the most of fresh tomatoes with this weeknight quick dish. Recipe below.

THE GOAL WAS JUST DINNER. FAST. With what we had on hand. Marion had picked some tomatoes and fresh basil from our suddenly productive garden. I’d gotten some Italian sausage in a grocery order. And we always have olive oil, garlic and various pastas around.

Marion asked what I was going to do with all of this. I said I don’t know. Maybe brown some sausage, add some garlic and chopped up tomatoes, some basil at the end and toss it all with pasta. She said sounds good. Tasting the sauce halfway through cooking, we saw that it was going to be really good.

Cooking without recipes is a skill I aspire to, but only occasionally do well. Often, the results are just dinner—okay but nothing to write down or repeat. In fact, sometimes when I’m serving something I’ve knocked together, I’ll say we can throw it out and get a pizza, and I won’t be offended. A time or two, we actually have.

But cooking even occasionally successfully without recipes comes from years of cooking from recipes. Applying certain techniques again and again, combining certain ingredients and flavors again and again. Developing culinary muscle memory—even rudimentary, like mine. Then trusting your instincts.

Penne with Fresh Tomato Sauce is just such an improvised dish. Italian sausage, garlic and basil all add their distinct flavors, but the base of the sauce is fresh tomatoes cooked down into a sauce. Not for hours, but for minutes. Depending on your tomato variety, your finished dish may feature chunky pieces of tomato or, like ours, the tomatoes may practically disappear into a sauce. Either is a good, delicious outcome.

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Penne with Fresh Tomato Sauce

Make the most of fresh tomatoes with this robust weeknight quick dish.

Course Main Course, Pasta

Cuisine Italian

Servings 3

Ingredients

• 10– 12 ounces dry penne pasta
• salt
• 3 good-sized tomatoes about 1-1/2 pounds (see Kitchen Notes)
• 3 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• 8 ounces bulk Italian sausage (see Kitchen Notes)
• 2 tablespoons dry sherry or vermouth (optional—see Kitchen Notes)
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh basil
• freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

• Start a large pot of water to cook the pasta. When it’s boiling, salt the water and cook the pasta. Cook it for two minutes less than the time required to cook it al dente. Drain, reserving about 1 cup of pasta water, and set aside.
• Meanwhile, chop tomatoes into big chunks, 1-inch or so. Mince the garlic.
• Drizzle some olive oil into a large sauté pan and heat over medium-high flame. Add the sausage and begin to brown, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Cook for a couple of minutes and reduce heat to medium—it won’t be cooked through yet and that’s okay. If your sausage renders a lot of fat, spoon some off (ours did not).
• Clear a hole in the middle of the pan and add the garlic. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Add the tomatoes and stir to combine. Season with black pepper and a little salt (you can add more later, if needed).
• Continue to cook sauce, stirring occasionally. The tomatoes will likely give off a lot of juice as they cook down and soften. Stir in the sherry, if using. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in most of drained pasta. If it looks like you can add all of it without overwhelming the other ingredients, do so. But pasta is reasonably inexpensive; if you don’t use it all, no big deal.
• Add a little of the pasta water, if needed. The pasta will finish cooking in the sauce, absorbing flavor and some of the liquid. You want it to have a glossy look. Cook for 2 minutes or until pasta is al dente.
• Stir in chopped basil and adjust seasoning with salt as needed. Serve in shallow pasta bowls.

Kitchen Notes

You say tomato. Any kind of red tomatoes will work. We used Damsels, a new variety created to taste like heirloom tomatoes. They cooked down impressively, giving off a lot of liquid and virtually disappearing into the sauce. Other varieties might remain chunkier, which is also good. You could even use halved cherry tomatoes, if you like.

Sausage options. We usually use turkey Italian sausage, but what we had on hand was pork, so we used that. You also have the choice of hot or mild—use what sounds good to you.

Sherry or no? This is totally optional, but we like the subtle nutty fruitiness it adds. You can also substitute a teaspoon of sherry vinegar, white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar.

Liz’s Crockery Corner. This bowl is a bit of a puzzler. The mark turned up a number of pieces that looked similar, but not exactly it. It could be English, but was more likely made in Scotland. One thing the mark tells us for sure is that it was made in 1850.