Roast sausages with kale pesto pasta.
So I have three of these curled sausages here.
So we just pierce those with a fork.
On a very large baking sheet, rimmed baking sheet,
I line it with double wide aluminum foil just for easy
cleanup and then I put, oh,
about a pound of grapes, black grapes.
What I do is I take a couple of clumps to garnish the
serving platter with and the rest of the grapes I pull off
because of course when you go to eat this dish,
you're going to have to remove them from the vine. Right?
I start with two large bulbs of fennel.
In this case, I actually leave the core attached
and slice it into thin wedges.
For the garlic all I do is take large bulbs
and expose all of the garlic.
You keep the root end intact.
The oven is, is pretty hot.
It's on 425, 450, you want it way up there
and I like to roast it one rack above center.
So let's dress this first with Rosemary
no need to chop it just scatter it around the tray
and we're gonna season with salt and pepper of course.
Then we're going to take good olive oil really douse
the roasted garlic especially make sure it's evenly coated
with the olive oil and then we'll just pop these guys
right on top and all of those juices will run out.
We pierced the casing and all over this stuff underneath.
I know it's crazy.
So a little drizzle of oil on the casing as well
and then aged balsamic.
So you want it to be thick and have a lot-
It should look like syrup and we'll put a little more on
when this comes outta the oven as well.
And away we go into the oven.
(audience applauding)
Now, last thing we're gonna do is get ready to
make our pesto.
So we're gonna take a big bunch of Flat Tuscan Kale
put it into some boiling salted water and then we're going
to cold shock it here and then we're going to dry it
really well to make the pesto on a kitchen towel.
This is a pound of Farro Spaghetti.
I like the flavor of a whole grainer whole wheat pasta
with this, but it's delicious with any long pasta you like
and this is in the same water that I blanched the kale in.
Just put the kale in there for 30 seconds.
Well salted water, because we're going to use it
as an ingredient to marry the sauce to the pasta.
Down here I have a fat handful each.
I'd say I have about a half a cup to two thirds of a cup of
almonds and I have about a quarter cup of pine nuts.
So in the food processor, I have our kale.
This is one bunch of flat or Italian kale
and I'm actually gonna process this a little bit first
just to kind of get it going.
(grinding)
And pulse chop it.
(grinding)
There we go.
Now we can add our other flavor layers,
crushed red pepper good fat pinch,
couple cloves of crushed garlic,
the juice of one lemon squeezing with the cut side up
and then we're going to add about a half a cup of good,
that really good fruity rich olive oil
and some Pecorino Romano.
You have a lot of choices with this.
This could easily be Hazel nuts and walnuts
delicious together.
This is what I had in the pantry.
I keep the nuts in the fridge or the freezer.
This guy-
(grinding)
We then just calls to combine.
(grinding)
And then you can taste and add a little salt if you want.
(grinding)
So here's our kale pesto style sauce.
My mom whenever she tossed pasta when I was a girl would
always put a few dabs of butter in with the hot pasta.
So we did that over the break
and this is the magic liquid starchy salty water.
So we're gonna add that to marry the pasta to the sauce.
We always cook pasta one to two minutes less
than the package directions.
Why? Because of this, this is called carryover cooking.
So here's the pasta course.
This would be served as the Primi, the first course.
(audience applauding)
And then the second course would be our beautiful
easy tray bake, right before you serve just squish that
roast garlic in there,
lay a bed of the shallots and the fennel,
pop the roast sausages onto there
and then you just douse the juice.
(audience applauding)