This recipe was reverse engineered by a friend’s wife, passed on to me, and then I adapted it to our purposes. The original calls for andouille sausage instead of sweet Italian. There’s not usually much fat rendered from the sweet Italian, so the roux creation doesn’t really happen. Anyway, iit’s hard to screw this one up, so experiment with the quantities of each ingredient to suit your taste.

• 1 pkg sweet Italian Sausage
• 1 pint grape tomatoes
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/4 of a medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• Some fresh basil, chopped however you please
• 1/2 pint light cream
• 1/2 lb penne pasta (though we use farfalle more often than penne)
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (pref. freshly grated)

Cook pasta according to instructions on box, drain well and reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water. Set aside.

Cook sausage in a small amount of olive oil for 6-7 minutes to brown, then add diced onion and cook until onion is translucent. Add cherry tomatoes and cook a few minutes until tender. Remove the sausage/onion/tomato mix from pan, then add flour to pan. Cook flour mixture for 3-4 minutes to create a small roux. Whisk in cream and bring to a boil, add sausage/onion/tomato mix back to pan. Add peas and pasta. If mixture is too thick, add some of the pasta water or milk (low cal) or more cream (high cal) until you reach the desired consistency. Top with basil. Serve.

Top with parmesan cheese according to individual preference.

One other note: the last few times I’ve cooked the pasta a bit al dente. I add extra cream when I add the pasta, then let it all boil down some… the pasta finishes cooking while everything’s cooking together. That’s me experimenting…