I came to create this recipe out of pure chance and both the husband and I were almost laughing at how good the result was. My first mistake: started cooking what I wanted to cook then realised I had none of the ingredients. Fail. My second mistake: decided to turn it into a pesto then realised I had no herbs. Fail. My third mistake: not remembering at the start that I had a jar of Barilla sundried tomato pesto in the panty that I was saving for a rainy day. The result? Somehow a non-beef stroganoff beef stroganoff. Somehow it became this creamy and umami’ish flavour without using any cream or any beef. Turns out sundried tomatoes go really well with Italian pork sausages and they go really well with mushrooms and they go really with chicken stock. And well, you know how the story goes.

Sundried Tomato Pesto Sausage & Mushroom Pasta

Serves 4

Ingredients

• Olive oil
• Knob of butter
• 3 Italian sausages – mine were pork
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 4 large mushrooms, sliced
• 4tbs sundried tomato pesto – I used Barilla’s
• 1 cup chicken stock
• Small handful chopped flat leaf parsley
• 500g small/short pasta
• Salt & pepper

Method

Drizzle a big glug of olive oil in a large skillet or pan and add a knob of butter. Once melted and over a medium-high heat add the sausage meat. Do this by squishing the meat out of the casing into little bits then once you’ve done all the sausage meat, add the garlic and mushrooms.

Fry until everything in the pan has caramelised (best to keep the heat high) then stir through the pesto until combined then pour over the chicken stock. Leave this to gently bubble away for 5 minutes then add the  parsley and turn off the heat.

Now’s when to get your pasta on the boil. Once that’s cooked and drained add the pasta to the sausage pan and turn the heat back on. Once everything is hot and delicious your’e good to go! Season with salt & pepper as you wish and serve with parmesan.