sausage pesto pasta;
Look familiar? I’ll give you a hint: I reviewed a dish quite like this last week from Kona Grill! Here’s my homemade take! The one bite I stole from one of my fellow bridesmaids K at the bachelorette dinner last weekend was so good I was still craving it two days later! So I tried to kinda make something up as I went. This was still quite tasty, and delicious, though of course not exactly the same. Definitely a keeper though! Pesto cream sauce with sausage medallions tossed with some spaghetti or linguine. Hope you enjoy!
You’ll notice in this photo that the middles of the sausages are still pink. Do make sure you cook them all the way through! The way I prefer to do medallions is to fry up the sausages and get a nice little char on the outside, then slice (pictured here), and then toss them back on the stovetop to get that nice yummy caramelization across all the pieces. You can take them off a touch early, since they’ll simmer for a few minutes in the cream sauce, but you definitely want them cooked through.
The flavors were definitely spot on, but the one thing I would change for next time is to wait for the sauce to thicken before dumping in the pasta and sausage. It was still quite tasty, but I was huuuuuuungry and couldn’t stand waiting those extra few minutes. I would also love to swap out the sweet sausage for spicy sausage. As it was, I ended up throwing in some red pepper flakes and a tiny pinch of cayenne to get a little of the heat that I was craving for the dish. I think it really helped elevate the dish with an extra pop of flavor.
We served it with roasted edamame. I haven’t provided the recipe here exactly, but basically as simple as it gets: thaw shelled edamame (if frozen), and blot dry. Add in a swig of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Add any remaining seasonings (in this case, fresh garlic, a pinch of garlic powder, and pinch of onion powder, and a sprinkle of cayenne), and toss together until coated. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, and bake at 400 degrees until lightly browned. You can swap up this recipe–try it out with some grated parmesan! It’s one of our favorite vegetables.
My original intention was actually to roast the edamame and add it into the pasta at the very end aspart of the dish. However, I started mixing the pasta together a little too early so the edamame wasn’t quite done, so I just went without and served it on the side. Both T and I ended up mixing it into the pasta anyway, so keep this little tidbit tucked away for those kids (or adults) that aren’t a big fan of their veggies! Coated in that not particularly healthy pesto cream sauce…they’ll never even know! And the small kick (just like in the shins) from the edamame again helped to pair with the spice I was craving in the pasta. Feel free to amp it up as per usual according to your tastes. Also note that this is an easy vegetarian substitution–swap out the sausage for some grilled tofu, or just leave it out all together and add in more vegetables! This recipe as a vegetarian option would be similar to asparagus pesto pasta, but with a heavier sauce since this one is a cream sauce.
