pasta alla norcina (aka white sausage & mushroom ragu)

Pasta alla Norcina is a pasta dish from Umbria, the dead center of Italy, specifically from an ancient town called Norcia, which is famous today for its signature fennel-less sausages and easy-to-find truffles. As with all the other old-school, deep-cut dishes from Italy, pastas are a form of bragging about your local abundance, done through tasteful celebration of the quality of those ingredients in their simplest, purest forms. I am not in a position, however, to easily get either one of them, and so I’ve been forced to make some adjustments.

final form

This is not dissimilar from Tuscan Pasta Boscaiola, which I’ve made (equally incorrectly) before on this website, only with no tomatoes at all. Instead, the sauce body comes entirely from fresh cream, so it’s not for the faint of heart or, really, for most weeknight occasions. It’s not a holiday, so rather than spring for truffles in a jar, I’ve used regular old pleb mushrooms chopped more or less into the consistency of the ground sausage for similar earthy vibes.

It is also not dissimilar from a fettuccine alfredo, given it’s effectively an emulsification of cream with aged cheese and pasta water, and somewhere across the sea in Umbria I know someone’s ghost will haunt me for saying so. Still: there’s just something a whole lot more “elevated” about having a Norcina night.

scenes from The Bar, 2021

RECIPE

Bolognese who? A traditional regional pasta from Umbria in central Italy, this classic Pasta alla Norcina is a creamy white ragu (no tomatoes) that features savory sausage, fall mushrooms, and fragrant herbs.

Effortful time: 20 minutes

Total time: 30 minutes

Serves: 4

YOU NEED

• 12 oz rigatoni or other short, grippy pasta

• 1 lb. mild Italian pork sausage, removed from casings

• 1 tbsp. olive oil

• 8 oz. crimini mushrooms

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 3/4 cup dry white wine

• 1 cup cream

• 1/2 cup grated pecorino romano, plus extra for serving

• 1/4 tsp. dried rosemary

• Chili flakes, optional

• Salt and pepper, to taste

MAKE IT

1. Get prepped. Finely chop the mushrooms; I just ran them in the ‘chop’ setting of a food processor. Peel and mince the garlic. Measure out wine and cream. Start and salt the water for pasta.

2. Brown the sausage. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Slice the sausage casings and crumble into the pan, breaking up while you cook until very finely ground and beginning to brown.

3. Cook the garlic and shrooms. Sauté garlic until just fragrant, less than 30 seconds. Add all of the chopped mushrooms and stir to coat in the oil. Continue browning all this until the mushrooms have lost their water, about 5 minutes.

4. Deglaze and reduce. Pour in the wine, lower the heat to low, and scrape up any bits. Simmer this 2 minutes until the wine has reduced.

5. Cook the pasta. At this point, I put in my pasta, which took 7 minutes to cook to al dente.

6. Build and simmer the sauce. Add the cream, chili flakes, rosemary, salt, and pepper to the sausage and mushrooms. Simmer this for 5-7 minutes until the cream is also reduced and thickened. At this point, please accept my apologies that the sauce will look absolutely, inedibly disgusting. I promise it gets better after this.

7. Thicken the sauce. Add the pecorino and stir until emulsified and thickened.

8. Toss with pasta and finish. Use a slotted scoop to transfer it over to the simmering sauce. Ladle in extra pasta water as needed to make sure you have a thick, glossy sauce situation happening; add a bit of additional pecorino if it’s too runny.

9. Serve with light red wine, more chili flakes, and extra pecorino.