Home-made Casarecce with Pesto alla Trapanese, home-made pork sausage.

This was very, very, very delicious and surprisingly the first time I have made this pesto before. Very easy and quick to make and so much delicious flavour. I added some pork sausage.mincr from sausages my uncle made, but this is of course optional.

340 grams of Cherry Tomatoes
3 Full Stalks of Basil Leaves Only (about 30-40 leaves)
5-10 Mint Leaves
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Cup of Pecorino Romano
1/2 cup of Olive Oil
1/2 Cup of Slivered Almonds (slightly toasted on a pan)
300g sausage mince
Salt QB

I placed the ingredients into a mortar and pestle like so in this order:
– Garlic and salt
– Almonds
– Basil and mint
– Tomatoes
– Pecorino
– Olive oil (little at a time)

Adjust tasting for need of more salt or pecorino and/or oil.

Once it's all come together, you can set aside or refrigerate until needed by wrapping in plastic, ensuring the surface is covered with olive oil. Remove the sausage from their casings and Cook on a pan. Bring a pot of salted boiling water and Cook the casarecce (if homemade, will take about 4-5 mins, depending on dryness). Cook the pasta and add it to the saucepan with the sausage mince. Add some water to deglaze and then take off the heat. Add the pesto into the mix, loosing out/adjusting with pasta water but ensure this is done off the heat, pesto should not go over the fire. "Mantecare" vigorously. Serve into bowls and Buon Appetito!

Dough recipe below:

Dough:
– 500g of semola flour (semolina)
– 248g of tepid water
– pinch of salt

I am not going to explain how the dough is made as there is an abundance of videos out there. However, I will advise that I kneaded for 15 mins, rested for 15 cling wrapped in the bench. Then kneaded for 10 more minutes and rested overnight in fridge covered in cling wrap. Then the casarecce are made my rolling out lengths of dough and shaped using a simple knitting needle, you could use a skewer if you wanted to. They do make a tool called a ferretto to do this but in Australia they are unnecessarily expensive (like everything else) ergo a knitting needle or similar is way cheaper and will absolutely be more than sufficient.