I have a special place in my heart for Bologna. It is where I spent my junior year of college, and it is where my young impressionable eyes were opened to many life lessons, namely:
In Bologna I watched my Italian flat-mate, Mariangela, magically transform fresh veggies and produce into mouthwatering meals, often with the help of nothing but salt and olive oil. Granted, it was grassy-hued liquid gold EVOO pressed from her family’s hand-picked olives in Calabria…but still, the simplicity was a revelation.
I was so excited to return to my beloved Bologna on our trip, and show/feed Hua all the things I had talked about for years. While we were in town, we stayed with Mari, who amazingly, still lived in the apartment building we lived in eight years ago.
Like old times, we spent a lot of our days at the market ogling the bursts of color spilling over fruit and veggie stalls, piles of handmade pasta, and dizzying arrays of meats and cheeses.
Some of our favorite meals in Bologna were ones we made at home. The flavor of the raw ingredients we gathered at the market was incredible. Things taste the way they are meant to taste. No genetic modification. No mass production. A strawberry was just a strawberry, perfect in and of itself…not some oversized monstrosity that tastes vaguely strawberry-like. The melon was the sweetest melon I’ve ever had. The tomatoes were unreal. The sausage was screaming with porktastic umami. The egg yolks were the color of a saffron orange sunset. Prosciutto crudo was just another lunch meat here, and real aged Parmigiana was a daily luxury.
We spent a lot of our evenings sitting at the table, sharing long, leisurely, simple yet soul-satisfying meals.
Pasta con Verdure, Salsiccia, e Panna (Pasta with Veggies, Sausage, and Cream) became a go-to favorite. Inspired by the bounty of fresh vegetables we’d gather by the armful at the market, this dish is brimming with vitamin-packed eggplant, onions, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes. It’s all sautéed down in Mariangela’s liquid gold, and then mixed together with tasty browned bits of sausage.
The crowning touch is the addition of panna da cucina, heavy cream so thick it needs to be squeezed out of its carton like toothpaste. Panna is commonly used in Italy to enrich or create sauces, however, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the States. You could easily substitute it with mascarpone cheese, heavy whipping cream, or crème fraiche. Come to think of it, if you are being calorie-conscious – something we clearly were NOT being throughout our travels – you could omit the cream all together and still have a perfectly delicious dish. The cream is really good though, it helps bind everything together into a more cohesive sauce, and just adds to the overall yummy factor.
I have no doubt this pasta dish will be making frequent appearances on our table well into the cooler months. It’s the kind of comforting meal that just leaves you feeling nourished.
A hearty pasta dish inspired by the bountiful markets of Bologna, Pasta con Verdure, Salsiccia, e Panna is brimming with sauteed veggies, beefed up with sausage, and finished with thick cream.
Ingredients
Instructions
Recipe Source: LickMySpoon.com.
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