I almost want to leave this here without comment. It’s mic drop pasta, only it’s the kind you make on a random Tuesday as if it’s no big thing. Start to finish, it takes about 20 minutes if you don’t include roasting the cherry tomatoes, which just takes an hour or two and can be done (days!) ahead. I also want to leave it here without comment because I’m tired. But that’s beside the point.

Unless it’s the height of summer and peak cherry tomato season, I firmly believe that cherry tomatoes are best when roasted, low and slow, with a little olive oil and salt. At least an hour, better two. Whatever acidity they have melts into a tangy sweetness, literally bursting with umami. A tray full of roasted cherry tomatoes is really a beautiful thing and elevates almost any simple meal (eggs! quiche! toast! pizza! salad! cheese and crackers!). It’s one of my all-time favorite things to eat. Up there with parmigiano reggiano and salted butter.

Another of my favorite ingredients, which is significantly harder to come by in London, is plain pork sausage. Sausage per se isn’t hard to find: the Brits love the stuff. Butchers in London sell so many varieties - Cumberland, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, to name a few - purporting to be regional delicacies but all tasting exactly the same. If you buy what the Brits call plain pork sausage, it will inevitably have (and I’m copying and pasting from the ingredients of ‘plain pork sausage’:) “Nutmeg, Ginger, Black Pepper, Mace, Mustard Powder and Chilli Powder), Salt*, Herbs (Thyme and Sage)”.

Yeah, no thank you.

I want sausage with nothing in it. Simple. Plain. Nothing extra. Nothing fancy. And I can never find it.

So when - random story - a documentary crew from our neighbourhood stopped by to film the girls on our front stoop answering questions about how they’re dealing with life under quarantine and mentioned they live nearby, right next to Salvino and I said, “near what?” and they said, “Salvino, that really famous Italian deli,” I learned I could get these perfectly plain sausages whenever I want, I rearranged my quarantine cooking brain and have been using sausage in all the things (see here and here).

I could use sausage with fennel seeds or chili or nutmeg or sage, but I won’t. It just won’t be anywhere as good, so why bother going to the trouble? The most important thing I learned from my years in Italy was this: don’t cut corners on ingredients and don’t add anything unnecessary. (I’ve written about this before and Gino D’Acampo, apparently, agrees). This doesn’t mean expensive ingredients, it just means real ones. Use real parmigiano if you can. Grate it when you use it. The best recipes often have the smallest number of ingredients. It means not making unnecessary substitutions or additions. Pork sausage, following this logic, should have nothing in it but pork and salt. The Italian way means, at its core, caring a lot about what you eat, and treating the whole process with respect.

I have clearly internalized this. I deeply appreciate eating a lot of over-the-top American foods (I dream of pulled pork nachos in my sleep and have never turned down a chicken nugget), but I don’t really cook that way (dessert exists in another world, in my opinion).

This pasta dish is minimal and perfect. The umami of the roasted tomatoes and the sausage, the slightly bitter wilted greens, the briny sauce, the creamy, dry ricotta salata on top: it is one of my new favourites. It’s elegant enough for a dinner party and simple enough for Tuesday, which more or less describes all of my favorite things. I hope this post inspires you to cut a million cherry tomatoes in half and roast them for an hour or two.

Nothing fancy, just delicious food made with intention, a little forward planning and making sure you don’t settle for any old sausage.

Pasta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Sausage, Rocket and Ricotta Salata

This makes such a beautiful plate of pasta and requires just a little bit of planning ahead. These quantities serve 4 - 5/make enough for 1 bag of pasta.

4 - 8 cups cherry tomatoes, halved (use as many as you can get your hands on, they really shrink once you roast them; I use about 2 kg/4.5 pounds)

2 - 3 cloves garlic, peeled and halved

olive oil

a few basil leaves (optional)

6 - 8 plain Italian-style pork sausages*

1 large handful baby rocket (arugula) (or basil if you prefer!)

1/2 cup ricotta salata, grated (for serving, available at most Italian stores)

1 bag of short pasta (I always use Garofalo or De Cecco, orecchiette work well here)

Start by roasting your cherry tomatoes. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Line some baking trays with foil and drizzle with olive oil (they’ll stick to the pan if there’s no oil underneath). Place the halved cherry tomatoes cut-side up on the trays - really pack them in there and top with the garlic and some torn fresh basil leaves if you want. Sprinkle with salt and a bit more olive oil, then bake for an hour or two; check on them to make sure they’re not burning. This part can be done well in advance; roasted cherry tomatoes and all the drippings can be stored in the fridge for a few days.

Now make the sauce while you boil the pasta water. Heat a glug of olive oil in a large pot. Use your hands to squeeze the sausage out from its casing into the pot (discard the casing); break up the sausage into little pieces as it browns over medium-high heat. Once sausage pieces are brown, add in everything from the trays: the roasted cherry tomatoes, garlic and all the drippings. Continuing cooking over medium heat while pasta boils in heavily salted water. Once pasta is almost ready, throw in the handful of rocket/arugula (this can be substituted with basil) and stir it all up.

Drain pasta when it is al dente (still a tiny bit crunchy), and dump drained pasta into the sauce. Cook together over high heat for a final minute: this way the pasta continues its final stage of cooking in the sauce and soaks in all that flavor.

Serve pasta in individual bowls and grate ricotta salata on top. If you can’t find any ricotta salata, consider having this pasta without cheese. Crazy, I know, but trust me.

*I am pedantic here: no fennel seeds, no chili, no nutmeg or whatever British people put in their sausages. You want to find plain Italian sausages, with no flavorings but salt and maybe pepper and maybe garlic. In North America, this is sometimes called “sweet Italian” sausage.