Hot Lips

Left over from our sausage making venture was some very spicy and very salty Italian sausage. (By the way, I figured out why it turned out so salty - I used regular table salt instead of kosher salt and the grains are smaller, hence they pack closer and add more salt to the mix).

I thought some veggies and some pasta would help to even out the salt and the spice, so I boiled some vermicelli and chopped a bunch of veggies to add to slices of the sausage.

First, I browned the sausage pieces in a little olive oil, then added the chunked veggies - mushrooms, sweet peppers, broccoli, onion, garlic - to the pan to sauté quickly in the sausage juices, then added a couple of tablespoons of the pasta water to stir around and make a quick "sauce" before plating.

It worked! Fast, tasty and economical, it made a lovely dinner with wonderfully summery colors. Not adding any salt to the mix tamed the overly salted sausage. It was still very spicy, but we like having hot lips.