Hello, Hi, how are you doing? I am returning to comfort food today with this recipe as I feel that in light of current events we could all do with a little bit of comforting.

Out of all the recipes I have created and written about this is possibly my favorite: I make it at least once a fortnight and try to have the required ingredients on hand at all times.

This dish started life as a humble sausage ragu and required only chopped tomatoes, garlic, thyme and sausage meat. I have stripped back and then added to this initial recipe to create the dish that I make today. Using canned chopped tomatoes makes it hard to differentiate a ragu from any plain old spag bol so I decided to cut them out and use a butter sauce with just a handful of fresh cherry tomatoes instead and I much preferred the results. I add in Parmesan, basil, chilli flakes and lemon juice to this sauce and all these beautiful flavours can shine through instead of being muffled slightly in a tomatoy base.

To take this dish from delicious to truly memorable I hugely recommend forking out a few extra pounds and getting high quality sausages and fresh pasta – although a tad extravagant it keeps the dish light and gives it that restaurant quality look and taste. My final note is that I know it requires a scary looking amount of butter but trust me it makes for a heavenly plate of pasta.

Serves 4 

Prep time – 15 minutes 

Cooking time – 20 minutes 

Ingredients

• 400g linguine
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 red onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1 handful of basil, finely sliced
• 2 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp oregano
• salt and pepper
• 300g cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 8 sausages
• 50g grated Parmesan
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 80g butter

Method

1. In a large frying pan heat up the olive oil over a medium heat and then add the onion, garlic and chopped stems of basil. Fry this for five minutes or until the onions have softened.
2. Add the chili flakes, thyme and oregano and stir to combine with the onion mix.
3. Using a knife carefully cut open the skin of the sausages and crumble the sausage meat out into a bowl. Stir the sausage meat into the frying pan and cook for around ten minutes so that the meat is cooked through and is browning slightly.
4. In a pan of boiling salted water cook the pasta according to the packet instructions.
5. Add the tomatoes, butter, lemon juice and parmesan to the pan and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add half a cup of the pasta water to the frying pan and then bring to the boil so that the sauce thickens and reduces.
6. Toss the pasta into the sauce, sprinkle with the basil leaves and any remaining basil leaves and then serve.