Spicy Pigs with White Wine, Fennel and Conchiglie

As you are (hopefully) aware, we always like to keep a beady eye on our customers' creations and dishes served up over social media.  Our collective knowledge base is pretty extensive, what with having a real live chef on board and around 70 years experience in butchery across the team. 

But every day is a learning day and it’s always great when a novel plate of meat-inspired goodness pops up on our feed. And it’s even better when we try a new recipe out at home.

This approach by Jack Does Cooking is quite simple and perhaps the thing that drew our attention is the fact that sausages are not just for breakfast, or to be paired up with mash, or grilled on the BBQ. They are indeed a lot more versatile than we give them credit for and his pairing of our Spicy Pigs with white wine, fennel and pasta really does hit the spot.

For our version, we’ve gone for Conchiglie or ‘seashell’ pasta, to catch all those nuggets of spicy porcine joy in those pockets when you stir the sauce through. 

Ingredients - serves 4

6 Spicy Pigs

Olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

1 tsp fennel seeds

1 glass of dry white wine

400ml tomato passata

Small bunch of parsley, chopped

Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

400g Conchiglie pasta

Parmesan, for shavings

Method

First, take the sausages and split the skins and crumble up the sausage meat into rough balls.

Place a large frying pan on the hob over a medium to high heat and add a splash of olive oil, followed by the sausage meat. Quickly fry to brown and crisp and then add the garlic and fennel seeds, frying for another minute or so.

Add the white wine and reduce completely, then pour over the passata and mix to combine. Bring the heat down and leave to simmer and thicken for 10 minutes. Taste towards the end and check for seasoning - it will probably only need some extra pepper.
Whilst the sauce is simmering, put the kettle on and pour the boiling water into a large saucepan. Add a good amount of salt and then the pasta and cook for 10 minutes (or according to instructions on the packet).

Drain the pasta, reserving some of the water and put back into the saucepan. Add the sauce, with a little amount of the water and stir through, then add half of the parsley.

To serve, plate up and sprinkle the remaining parsley over, along with some Parmesan shavings and an extra drizzle of olive oil.