I came up with this sauce almost twenty years ago because I wanted to use one of the most traditional sausages from my area as sauce for pasta rather than as a traditional entre like it is normally used in Northern Italy. The sausage I am talking about is called "cotechino" and it is traditionally made in winter time. It is a large sausage made with pork and spices and it requires a few hours of slow cooking before it can be served. We cook the cotechino for 3-4 hours, then we dice it and cook it again with Italian porcini mushrooms, onions, cream, and white wine. Needless to say, this is a hearty pasta sauce, perfect for a cold winter day, that's why I called it "Inverno", which means "winter" in Italian. I quart container, enough for 4-6 serving.
Inverno Pasta Sauce
Cotechino sausage (pork, water, salt, sugar, dextrose, spices, sodium erythorbate, flavorings, sodium nitrite), porcini mushrooms, onions, cream, white wine. Contains dairy.
This sauce is gluten free but please note that, even though we are careful trying to avoid cross contamination, we use a lot of products that contain gluten in our kitchen.
We suggest thawing the sauce in the refrigerator overnight and then heating it up carefully in the microwave or on the stove top. It is a chunky pasta sauce, so it is best served with a short, thick pasta such as our gemelli pasta. A sprinkle of Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese will finish the dish beautifully.