Yummy Pasta w/cabbage and sausage.

Pasta is an astonishingly variable universe. Many fall/winter recipes are slow cooking, but there are times when one has to get the meal ready sooner, and Leonardo Romanelli's tortiglioni with sausages and cabbage recipe is quite tasty, and can be prepared in the time it takes the pasta water to come to a boil.

As an added bonus, Leonardo's recipe is a nice way to slip cabbage, which is one of the healthier winter vegetables, past people who might object to it in a salad or as a side dish.
Ingredients:
A spring onion, washed, roots trimmed, and sliced into rounds, green part too
A small bunch of basil
A small hot pepper, crumbled
1 1/2 cans (600 g) canned tomatoes
A small head of white cabbage, shredded; you could also use cauliflower florets
A small wedge fresh pecorino toscano (150 g, or 6 ounces); you could also use mild cheddar or Jack cheese. Do not use Pecorino Romano.
4 link sausages, about 300 g (2/3 pound), casings removed
2/5 cup olive oil
Fine grained salt and freshly ground black pepper, for seasoning
Coarse-grained kosher salt, for the pasta water
4/5 pound (about 360 g) Tortiglioni or penne
Preparation:
Preparation:

Set a pot of pasta water to boil.
Next, remove the casings from the sausages and put them in a non-stick skillet over a medium flame. Break them up with the back of a fork and stir the pieces about as they brown.
When the meat has browned -- you don't want to cook the sausage too much, or it will dry out -- remove it to a bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving the drippings behind.
Add the olive oil to the drippings in the pan and as soon as it is hot, the spring onion. Season with a pinch of salt and the hot pepper, and sauté until the spring onion is translucent and golden.
Leave the pepper whole, but if you prefer a little more zing, you can crumble it.
Add the sliced cabbage and continue to cook, stirring, until it is wilted and lightly browned, about 3-5 minutes.
You can also use other winter vegetables, for example cauliflower florets, and I would add that other leafy cabbages would also be nice, for example Savoy cabbage or black leaf kale (if you discard the tougher ribs).
Stir the tomatoes into the pan, and break them up with the back of a fork or wooden spoon. Leonardo uses canned rather than fresh tomatoes because the canned tomatoes are quite moist -- they are, after all, packed in juice -- and thus provide the moisture the cabbage needs to simmer in.
When the sauce comes back to a boil, it will need to cook for 15 minutes. Therefore check the cooking time of your pasta, and calculate when you will need to begin cooking it. Tortiglioni had a cooking time of 10 minutes, so he simmered the cabbage mixture for 5 minutes before salting the boiling pasta water and adding the pasta to it.
With the pasta cooking and the cabbage simmering, it's time to see to the pecorino. Trim the rind and dice the wedge into quarter inch (1/2 cm) dice.
Use a mild pecorino, which was also fairly soft -- not a well seasoned cheese. If you cannot find pecorino toscano, you could use a scamorza, or -- looking beyond Italy -- a mild cheddar, or a moderately aged Jack cheese.
Do not use pecorino romano, because it will be much too salty.
Coarsely shred the basil and stir it into the sauce, followed by the sausages.
The sauce will have thickened considerably by this point, and the pasta should be just about done. Stir a few tablespoons of pasta water into the sauce.
Drain the pasta when it is still al dente, and turn it into the sauce. Turn the heat to high, and stir briskly to combine the pasta and the sauce.
Mix in the cheese, and as soon as it begins to soften -- you don't want it to melt and really string out -- remove the pan from the fire. Dust with a grind or two of black pepper -- added at this point it contributes aroma to complement the zing of the hot pepper -- and you're done!
Serve with crusty bread, with which to mop up the drippings, and a rosé, perhaps a Salice Salentino or a Castel Del Monte. Or, if you want a red, a Rosso di Montepulciano