farfalle with sausage

This is too much for my delicate little tummy. You know how mild and demure I am.

What?

No seriously, I couldn't finish. But Mommy, my spinach isn't cooked and it has sand in it. EAT IT! But Mommy, my sausage is burning my throat. EAT IT! But Mommy, it has too much garlic and it's turning my face red. EAT IT! But Mommy, the wine in this makes my head hurt. EAT IT! But Mommy, I found a microscopic hair on my plate. Well in that case, Honey, here, have yourself a Dove bar.

So we call this bow tie pasta but Italians call it butterflies. But they also call bow ties butterfly ties. So. Did the Italians name the pasta after bow ties which in turn were named after butterflies or did they name both bow ties and pasta after butterflies? What do I look like, a foreign language etymologist over here? I say, the pasta came before the bow ties, therefore the pasta was named directly from the butterflies and not the bow ties. Nor were the bow ties named from the pasta which were named between the butterflies and the bow ties. But that's me. A friend of mine, an argumentative sort who delights in disputing small things and who also speaks Italian, disagrees with that conclusion. Since he's older than my demure and timid self he thinks that trumps everything so, that, and his possession of a thick head, he cannot be told anything. Bastard.

Fried the sausage I made earlier in a pan then removed it retaining the grease it released. It wasn't enough so I augmented with butter. Added an equal amount of flour and browned the roux. Seasoned it. Cooked diced onions and mushrooms in the finished roux so that it coated it all. Deglazed with the red wine that was opened earlier. Added milk for a thin sauce. The roux that coated the onions and mushrooms released steadily so there was no chance of lumps forming. I kept thinning with milk as needed.

Layered on a plate sauce, farfalle, spinach, farfalle, sauce, herbs, Parmigiano. That turned out to be twice as much as I could handle. I'm a pig, and I have no portion judgement at all, especially when it comes to pasta.

Sadly, this isn't as good as it might look. The sauce lacks something. It's boring. It's the sort of thing that would be OK on a biscuit but not that great on pasta. In fact, I'm never going to do it again. Plain olive oil with garlic would be better.