Sausage Tequila Cream Sauce

We love our pasta in our house.  Riley normally doesn’t mind pasta.  She won’t necessarily eat it if there’s meat in the sauce so I always make sure to make pasta and set it aside for her so she can have jarred sauce on top.  I, on the other hand, enjoy a little variety.  I grew up with my mom always making her own spaghetti sauce, but that was an all day affair.  As you all know, I enjoy quick and easy.  I went looking for a vodka cream sauce with sausage and came across this recipe from Emeril Lagasse.  It sounded perfect so I decided to double the recipe and substitute what I didn’t have, which I thought was the crushed tomatoes.  I simply used stewed tomatoes instead.  As I was about half way through the ingredients, I realized I didn’t have any vodka.  Um, fabulous.  After eyeballing my liquor cabinet and running over to the neighbor’s house to no avail, I decided to go with Tequila Silver.

I have to say that this recipe was AMAZING.  I like to think that it was largely due to the fact that I changed out the vodka for Tequila.  All I know is that it was fabulous!

My Ingredients:

1/2 box pasta

2 tablespoons olive oil

package of 6 sweet sausage links

1 onion

1 teaspoon salt

less than a pinch of red paper flakes

14 oz can of stewed tomatoes

4 teaspoons minced garlic

6 tablespoons of Tequila Silver

4 tablespoons of heavy cream

Directions:

Cook the pasta according to directions.  While the pasta is cooking, remove the sausage from the casing and cook in the olive oil so that it is more like crumbled sausage.  Once the pink is gone in the sausage, add in the onion, salt and red pepper.  Cook until all the onions are soft and golden (about 5 minutes).  Add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds.  Then add in the tomatoes and cook 2 minutes.  Add the Tequila and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.  Stir in the cream and cook until the sauce thickens (about 2 minutes).  Toss the pasta with the sauce.  Plate the pasta and top with Parmesan cheese and a sprig of fresh basil.