Tomato & Chorizo pasta

I am not ashamed about the fact that I dream about food. I do it quite often actually. Even when the dream isn’t ABOUT food, food features in my dreams more often than not. But when you dream about one ingredient, every night for a full week, you know the obsessive line has been crossed. Last week, this happened to me and I dreamt about Chorizo every single night. Now, I like to listen to my dreams when they repeat themselves and so I knew I would need to cook something with chorizo soon to stop myself from waking up, salivating!

I wanted to keep it simple as my week’s have been quite chaotic lately and decided to use the chorizo in a spicy tomato sauce with pasta. I love how using a few good quality ingredients can result in a dish so full of rich, beautiful flavours. I used a really good quality chorizo sausage (with lots of lovely yellow fat) and some almost-over ripe cherry tomatoes I had in my fridge but 2 tins of cherry tomatoes would do just fine. I wanted to amp up the porkiness of the pasta so I added a packet (250g) of smoked bacon.

As pastas go, I almost always serve them with a good grating of Pecorino cheese but as I was reaching for it in my fridge, saw the tub of Feta cheese and thought the salty, slight creaminess would be just great with the spicy, almost-sweet pasta. Perfect weeknight food!

Serves 6

200g Chorizo sausage, roughly chopped
250g smoked streaky bacon, roughly chopped
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
500g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 tsp sugar
handful fresh parsley, finely chopped
salt & pepper to taste
crumbled feta cheese, to serve
750g cooked pasta of your choice, reserve 2 cups of the cooking liquid

1.  In a hot, large pan, fry the chorizo and bacon until golden brown. Remove from the pan and set aside.
2. In the bacon & chorizo fat, fry the onion and garlic until soft and translucent then add the tomatoes and sugar. Add a splash of water and allow to cook and reduce for 10-15 minutes.
3. If the tomatoes seem to be drying out, add a splash of water/chicken stock.
4. When the tomatoes are soft and the sauce has reduced, add the chorizo and bacon back to the pan and add the parsley. Season to taste.
5. Toss the cooked pasta with the sauce and add some of the reserved cooking liquid to loosen the sauce has you go.
6. Serve with crumbled feta cheese.