Fresh Summer Vegetable and Chicken Sausage Pasta

Summer’s bountiful harvest of vegetables and fruits serve as the inspiration for many of the new recipes I create each year. A quick visit to a well-stocked local farmer’s market or produce section of an upscale grocery store is all I need to pull together a few ideas for new, tasty, and creative dishes. This fresh summer vegetable pasta is one of my recent creations I wanted to share with you!  

I can’t get enough pasta – Laurie and I make it at least once a week and vary not only the type of pasta we use (fresh or dried, different shapes and sizes) but also the sauce and other accompaniments we put on top like vegetables, proteins, and herbs. It’s frankly one of the easiest and quickest meals to make and is perfect served with garlic bread or a tossed green salad. Also, it’s great for leftovers the following night if you make extra which we almost always do.

Recently, Laurie mentioned she had a hankering for fresh vegetable pasta based on some beautiful cherry tomatoes we had purchased at the store the previous weekend. In particular, she was interested in a recipe that used fresh tomatoes as the base instead of canned or jarred tomatoes and sauce.  I pulled out a few recipes for “raw” (meaning uncooked) tomato sauce that we had saved in our recipe file for her to pick from. Her choice? Well, she decided she wanted a combination of two different recipes, just to keep things interesting! So, I decided this was the perfect opportunity for me to create my own new fresh summer vegetable pasta recipe based on inspiration from the recipes she had chosen. NOTE: the two recipes I riffed off of here include one from the Aug 2021 issue of Food and Wine Magazine (Pasta with Roasted Sun Gold Tomato Sauce) and one from the June/July 2021 issue of Fine Cooking Magazine (Farmer’s Market Spaghetti) – I wanted to make sure to credit them here since I borrowed ideas from both to create this recipe.

First, I decided to use those cherry tomatoes we had bought to make the sauce. Raw would be good, but when you roast these small tomatoes in an oven, it intensifies their flavor and draws out their juices to create an amazing base for the sauce. I also wanted to add some protein into the mix, so I bought some Italian chicken sausage that I cut into thin discs and then browned in the sauté pan. One of the recipes called for grilled zucchini, so I decided to incorporate that into the recipe but chose to sauté the zucchini in the same pan as the sausage to take maximum advantage of all of those flavorful brown bits at the bottom of the pan from the sausage. Finally, I thought a short pasta would pair well with this sauce, so I chose casarecce, which are short twists of pasta rolled up on themselves – they capture and hold sauce really well. And Walla – a new recipe is born!!

Hopefully this recipe will inspire you to experiment and come up with your own pasta recipe. If you do, let me know – I’d love to try it!

Fresh Summer Vegetable and Chicken Sausage Pasta (Serves 4)

This quick and tasty pasta recipe is made from fresh summer ingredients and you can easily make it your own by changing out the vegetables or protein – the sky’s the limit! Pair with frozen garlic bread or a quick tossed green salad for an easy weeknight dinner. I like a nice crisp Italian white wine like Gavi or Vermentino with this dish.

Ingredients

3 pints cherry or grape tomatoes

10 garlic cloves, peeled

1 cup extra virgin olive oil, divided

4 links chicken sausage, sliced crosswise into thin discs

1 large zucchini, cut into ½ inch dice

¼ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

2 tbsp. plus 2 ½ tsp. kosher salt, divided

1 tsp. freshly ground pepper, divided

16 oz. short pasta (like casarecce or penne rigatoni)

½ cup reserved pasta water

½ cup fresh grated parmesan cheese

Directions

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the tomatoes on the baking sheet along with the garlic cloves. Mix with ½ cup olive oil, 1½ tsp. kosher salt and ¼ tsp. ground black pepper. Place in oven and roast for 35 minutes until tomatoes start to wilt.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water and 2 tbsp. kosher salt to a boil. Stir in the pasta and cook according to package instructions until just al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving ½ cup of the pasta water.

While you are waiting for the water to boil, heat 1 tbsp. olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the chicken sausage and sauté until golden brown, about 7-8 minutes – remove from pan and place in a medium bowl. Add the zucchini to the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently and scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan – remove from pan and add to bowl with the browned sausage.

Put the roasted tomatoes, along with their juices and the garlic in the same saucepan you used to cook the sausage and zucchini. Add the remaining ½ cup olive oil along with 1 tsp. of kosher salt, ½ tsp. ground pepper, and the crushed red pepper flakes and cook over medium heat for about 5-7 minutes, stirring frequently and smashing the tomatoes and garlic with the back of a wooden spoon until the sauce thickens a bit. Add the chicken and zucchini into the sauce, along with the pasta and reserved pasta water – stir until combined and sauce thickens a bit more.

Serve in pasta bowls with grated parmesan cheese and a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil.