I love love love Japanese/yoshoku stye pasta dishes. They really combine the best of both Western and Eastern cuisines. Pasta Napolitan is an interesting one, because it features spaghetti in a spicy tomato sauce with onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, and Vienna sausages. It is hearty, warming, and perfect for what my unofficial theme for January is – I want to highlight noodle dishes at least once a week, because long noodles in Taiwanese culture mean long life, and my New Years resolution is have be better to myself emotionally and mentally, because life is a marathon, not a sprint. In the case of this recipe, I am keeping things mostly intact with the original dish – I did make my own spaghetti from scratch, and made a spicy tomato sauce with onions and bell peppers. Instead of Vienna sausages, I used Berkshire pork sausages that I got from my local Japanese grocery store, and instead of the canned button mushrooms, I used dried porcinis that I rehydrated in water – and I cooked my pasta in that mushroom water to impart more flavor. If you don’t have dried porcinis, use dried shiitakes – they will be just as tasty! This recipe is an extremely quick one, even with the fresh pasta being factored in, and is definitely a back of pocket one I’ll be keeping whenever I need to make a quick meal.

Makes 2 servings:
For the pasta dough:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
a pinch of salt
10g dried porcini

In a bowl, mix everything together, sans the porcini, until a dough forms and knead until it springs back when poked. Allow the dough to rest for 5-10 minutes before rolling out to the 2nd thinnest setting on your pasta roller, then cutting into noodles.

In a pot of heavily salted water, start by boiling the porcini mushrooms until soft and tender. Reserve the porcinis, patting those dry. Boil the pasta for 45 seconds before tossing in the sauce.

For the sauce:
6 Berkshire sausages, sliced thinly on a bias
1 yellow onion, peeled and diced
2 green bell peppers, julienned
2oz tomato paste
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp tobasco sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce

In a nonstick pan, start by rendering the fat out of the Berkshire sausages. Once the sausages are crispy, remove from the pan and start sweating the onion and bell peppers in the pork fat on medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Then add in the remaining ingredients, stirring together and cooking on low until thickened. Add to that the mushrooms and the sausage, and finish with the pasta.