Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, where we’re running late this week, but I assure you it was for a good reason. We’ll briefly touch on that later, but for now, just rest assured that today’s recipe only takes about 90 minutes, and technically involves some advanced cookery made simple. You can skip the story and get to the gory by clicking this link to go to the recipe. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

A Bustling Time

I think I mentioned it in last Monday’s/Thursday’s post, but last week was CRAZY.

We cooked at least 10 dishes between Thanksgiving and churning out stuff for ourselves.

The Excursion broke down, was taken to the shop, and we GOT A NEW CAR to replace it.

A TREE FELL ON OUR HOUSE. (To immediately douse that shock: a cherry tree in our backyard uprooted itself, and ended up leaning into our deck/roof. There was no structural damage, it just took 3-4 hours to chop down the tree, since it had been poorly maintained for decades, and wasn’t worth saving.)

Nate and I went on a pub crawl.

We had dinner with our grandparents twice.

And, on Sunday, I ran off to Leavenworth to work the holiday rush. A trip that had its own classic hits of panic like “I didn’t pack enough on Saturday, so Sunday morning is hell.” “I’m now in Seattle, and have remembered 4 things I meant to bring.” “I am now in the mountains, and have realized I don’t know the mileage of this new car, and therefore don’t know if I have enough gas.”

Simply having A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TIME.

Indeed, one of the reasons we’re late is that I had to buy TWO replacement WIFI receivers, when I couldn’t find mine at home. I bought one, it seemed to work, though it was a little slow, and then Monday morning it turned out that it could get REALLY slow. So I had to drive to Wenatchee and back to buy another one identical to the one I left at home, because A: I know it works, and B: now, I have twice the odds of finding the pieces when I look for them next time.

The upside to all of that madness is now I SHOULD be able to just spend my evenings doing…basically whatever. Of the recipes we cooked, SEVEN have been photographed for the site, so I could technically coast off of Thanksgiving Week’s cooking for 2 months. I WON’T, because I’m a masochist, but at the very least, I have the next 5ish weeks of posts planned out. And if in the next day or two I find I REALLY want my air purifier or whatever, I can run back home on my day off. It’s like, $20 cheaper than it used to be!

The point is, I’m hoping to be able to take it a little cooler in the Kitchen this December. So, in honor of that, let’s start with a recipe where you have to make your own sausage.

A Potent and Porky Problem

Today’s dish is orecchiette alla norcina . Norcia is a town in central Italy, specifically in southeast Umbria. The area is renowned for its processing of pork: Norcio specifically is heavily associated with wild boar sausage, salami, etc. Supposedly, back in the day, it was actually a common insult in Italian to call certain medical professions norcina, implying that, rather than actual doctors, they were pig butchers. Supposedly, this comes from the Umbrian region’s weird cross-over between medical and culinary science, which we didn’t get into in the Turchetta post: that there was a weird amount of cross-over between Benedictine monks in the region, who were constructing anatomical and surgical guides, and the local butchers, who were often the most skilled men at cutting bones, slicing between ribs, etc. Thus, the joke was that your blood-letter, dentist, barber, or whatever might actually just be a butcher earning some extra cash cutting up people instead of pigs.

I’m sorry, did I hear a thing about barbers cutting up people for money?

Beyond that, the region’s excellence in pork products is so well known that the NAME for a butcher shop specializing in pork or boar sausage or other cured meats is CALLED a norcineria/e. Despite being so famous in Italy, what’s particularly interesting about norcina sausage is that we don’t make it in America. American Italian sausage is based off a rather distinct form of Italian salsiccia. It’s why we tend to have fennel and/or red pepper flakes in it. Norcina sausage doesn’t: since it’s meant to be made with gamier pork, it’s primarily flavored with rosemary, nutmeg and sometimes truffle. Indeed, the truly authentic version of this dish basically requires black truffle, but I figured we’d do the cheater’s version first. Trust me, it’s fancy enough to satisfy.

So the first think you have to do for the recipe is, in essence, MAKE your own norcina sausage. There are a variety of ways to do this, but we’re going for America’s Test Kitchen’s method, because they’re who I learned about the recipe from, the sausage process is relatively quick and easy, and the weirdest part of the process might be this.

Wet. Dishes.

That’s a greased-up plate, prepared so you have a flat surface to shape your sausage into a patty before cooking. But that’s not the first step (or, rather, it CAN be, grease the plate whenever you want), because first you have to make the sausage. So, let’s see how it, and then the pasta, gets made.

Build it Up and Break it Down

To do this, you’re going to make a brine of salt, water, and baking soda. Baking soda is the secret weapon here: normally, you’d want to beat the ground pork and seasonings, let them chill for at least an hour and up to several days to allow the flavors to meld, and we ain’t got TIME for that. Baking soda changes the chemical composition of the pork, so it’s a little more accepting, and a little juicier. Mix half a pound of pork in the brine, working to fully coat and incorporate, and then let it sit for 10 minutes.

To the pork ball, add some chopped rosemary, freshly ground nutmeg, and minced garlic. You don’t HAVE to freshly-grind your nutmeg, we just did so because it turns out we don’t have any pre-ground left in the house.

Having never personally grated nutmeg before, it’s remarkable how much it exactly feels like sanding/grating wood.

Work the seasoning into the pork, plop it on the plate, and form it into a single big patty, about 6” across. This is going to let you get good browning on the outside of the patty, while still having under-cooked meat that won’t overcook as it’s tossed and simmered with the sauce. Speaking of, get some browning on that bad boy! Get a sizeable skillet (you’ll eventually cook both meat and sauce in here), get it barely smoking, and put some sear on that sucker.

I have to say, I love that this ACTUALLY BROWNED. Look at that. It’s BROWN. Do you know how rarely I get to see it?

Once the outside is seared (2-3 minutes per side), plop it on a cutting board, and chop it up to around ¼” chunks. Small enough to eat easily, but not like, re-minced. Plop the chop in a bowl, and pour over some heavy cream to soak into the meat, and soak the cream with the meat. This feels like a good time to mention that this dish is almost VIOLENTLY non-vegan. Like, I’m sure you could MAKE a vegan version, but sauce-wise, we’re talking cream and meat and cheese. Anywho, you should also start some water boiling. In fact, I might have put the pot on before you cooked the pork, because without the pasta and pasta water, the timing of the sauce gets a little weird.

From there, you gotta cook the OTHER thing that’s really chopped up in this recipe: mushrooms. As I mentioned, the original recipe uses black truffles, and while I CONSIDERED doing it (I have at least one jar of summer truffles in the house), we agreed to not burn through $20 of mushrooms for a vague guess on the right proportions. Instead, take some normal crimini (the small brown ones) muhrooms, and chop them to tiny bits in a food processor.

I didn’t take a picture of it just cut up, but you can see it nearly VANISHING in this oil.

These are going to cook down SMALLER than the tiny sausage particles, but for now, they’re frying off in the leftover pork fat and a little vegetable oil. Once it’s cooked down and browned, you can hit it with some more oil and some aromatics: more rosemary, more garlic, and pepper. Then, deglaze the pan with some white wine. Pour out your pasta, retaining 1.5 cups of the pasta water, while the wine cooks out. Add back the sausage and cream, and half the pasta water. Simmer 2-3 minutes until there’s no visibly pink sausage left. Remove from the heat, and add in Pecorino Romano cheese.

This looks like a weird country gravy.

Pour the mixture over the drained pasta, add ONE FINAL round of additions (some parsley and lemon juice), and toss everything to ensure the pasta is richly coated. If the sauce looks too thick, drizzle in a little more pasta water and keep tossing. EVENTUALLY, you get a bowl like this.

It’s very speckly.

And the results are…Good, in a very interesting way. Despite the many components and flavors, it’s not a very challenging dish. In texture and base flavor profile, the comparisons we kept coming to were quite like, “Shells in White Cheddar or Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff, by way of an actual Italian chef”. It tastes very much like you paid someone competent to make you a $12 bowl of boxed pasta, and they hit the mark pretty squarely. The flavor profile’s a little unusual, with the Pecorino Romano leaving a bit of a funky finish where I really feel that a stronger mushroom flavor would provide a better partner, but that could be the preconceptions coming in: expecting it to TASTE like the store-bought sauces it reminds me off. It’s not at all bad, it’s just a little out of our wheelhouse. (I mean, we had to MAKE our own sausage for it, we were always in new territory.) I do think, despite the potentially daunting ideas in it, that it’s a cool recipe you should try.

THURSDAY: A CULINARY COMPENDIUM OF CHRISTMAS LIBATIONS. WE RETURN TO THE WORLD OF WASSAILS, MULLS, AND GLUE. I’M PRETTY SURE I SPELLED THAT LAST ONE WRONG.

MONDAY: IT’S EITHER PIES OR INSTAPOT. I THINK PIES FIRST, FOR REASONS YOU’LL SEE LATER.

Here's the

Recipe

Pasta alla Norcina

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

Quick Sausage

1⅛ teaspoons salt

¼ teaspoon baking soda

4 teaspoons water

8 ounces ground pork

1 teaspoon garlic

3/4 teaspoon rosemary

⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

2 tsp vegetable oil

Sauce And Pasta

5 tsps vegetable oil

8 ounces crimini mushrooms, trimmed

⅛ teaspoon salt

2 tsp minced garlic

½ tsp rosemary

½ tsp pepper

¾ cup heavy cream

1 pound orecchiette

½ cup dry white wine

1 ½ ounces Pecorino Romano cheese, grated (3/4 cup)

3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Preparation

Prep your stations: grease a dinner plate, fill a pot with 4 quarts of water, and prepare a couple bowls for mixing and storing.
Make the sausage: Dissolve salt and baking soda in water in medium bowl. Add pork and fold gently to combine; let stand for 10 minutes. Add garlic, rosemary, nutmeg, and pepper to pork and smear with rubber spatula until well combined and tacky, 10 to 15 seconds. Transfer pork mixture to greased plate and form into rough 6-inch patty.
Heat 2 teaspoons oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Add patty and cook without moving it until bottom is browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Flip patty and continue to cook until second side is well browned, 2 to 3 minutes longer (very center of patty will be raw). Remove pan from heat, transfer sausage to cutting board, and chop into 1/8- to 1/4-inch pieces. Transfer sausage to bowl and add cream; set aside.
Pulse mushrooms in food processor until finely chopped, 10 to 12 pulses. Bring water to boil. Add pasta and 2 tablespoons salt and cook, stirring often, until al dente. Reserve 1 1/2 cups cooking water, then drain pasta and return it to pot.
While pasta cooks, return now-empty skillet to medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon oil, mushrooms, and ⅛ teaspoon salt; cook, stirring frequently, until mushrooms are browned, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in remaining oil, garlic, rosemary, and pepper; cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in wine, scraping up any browned bits, and cook until completely evaporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in sausage-cream mixture and ¾ cup reserved cooking water and simmer until meat is no longer pink, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir in Pecorino until smooth.
Add sauce, parsley, and lemon juice to pasta and toss well to coat. Before serving, adjust consistency with remaining reserved cooking water as needed and season with salt and pepper to taste.