Most decidedly not vegan, but very delicious, nonetheless.

Spaghetti with Spicy Sausage, Fennel 3 ways, and Mushrooms

1 lb spicy Italian bulk sausage (preferably local - I highly recomment 7 sons for those here in Indy)

4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped 

2 tsp. fennel seeds, crushed in a pestle and mortar (or processor)  

1 fennel bulb, frondy tops intact

8 oz cremini mushrooms 

1/2 c half and half 

1 lb spaghetti (the best you can find)

1 c. finely grated parmesan, plus, more to serve if desired

1 c. reserved pasta cooking water 

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

Cook the sausage over medium-high heat until no longer pink, then mix in the fennel seed and garlic.  Cook a few minutes longer, or until the garlic smells perfect.  Remove the frondy tops from the fennel bulb and set aside.  Cut the stem off of the bottom of the bulb, slice in half vertically, remove the core, and then slice into think strips.  Add fennel bulb to the sausage mixture and stir to coat.  Remove stems, if desired, from the mushrooms and clean with a wet paper towel.  Slice thinly and add to the pan.  Stir again, sprinkle with salt, a generous amount of pepper, and add a bit of olive oil if the mixture looks dry (7 sons sausage is actually very lean), cover with a lid and continue to cook over medium heat for a while, stirring occasionally so as to prevent burning.  

Start your pasta water. 

While the water comes up to temp (do cover it with a lid to speed up this process), pick the frondy tops off of the fennel stalks.  Finely chop and set aside.  

Cook pasta according to package directions.  When pasta is just about done, add half and half and 1 c. cooking water to the sausage mixture.  Stir well and then remove from the heat.  Drain pasta and toss with sausage mixture and frondy tops in the pasta cooking pot.  Return to heat and stir, stir, stir, cooking until liquid dissolves.   Adjust as necessary with salt after stirring in 1 c. parmesan.  Top with additional cheese, if desired.

It’s hard to believe that we are already starting the cleanup of our garden.  I guess it is late August, afterall, but it just seems a bit too soon.  Nonetheless, pests and disease have started to really take their course, and since we’ve done this organically, we’re nearing the end. 

This weekend our garlic was finally ready to harvest.  This was an experiment for us, since we’d never grown it before,  and I must say – we’re now hooked.  This was about the easiest thing we’ve ever grown.  1) Get seed garlic and separate into cloves.  2) Plant said cloves in appropriately loamy, compost-y soil.  3) Wait for garlic to be ready to harvest (at least this year – it rained so much we never had to water.)  To be fair, we did fertilize with a bone-meal solution about every month or so, but that’s all there was to it.

Considering this little effort, the return on effort was immense.  Check out the pictures over on the right-hand bar –>  Garlic, garlic, garlic.

I braided it into three bunches and have hung it to dry in the basement for curing…If all goes well, we ought to have tasty, organic, homegrown garlic until next spring.