There was often a uniquely delicious smell filling my great aunty’s house when we’d drop by for a meal. This is in contrast to my poor nonna, whose penchant for boiled broad beans left her house more often than not smelling like sweaty feet. It was many years before I learned that the characteristic ingredients of my aunty’s famous pasta bake (and to be fair, my nonna’s equally famous prupettone) were in fact rather representative of southern Italian cooking in general: the humble hardboiled egg and a chunk of salami.

Sausages are fantastic; what more is there to say? They’re a self-contained, considered balance of meat, fat, and spice. I can relate. And they’re versatile: as perfect slow-cooked in a stew or sauce as they are grilled and rolled up in a slice of white bread. Think of this deliberately uncomplicated pasta sauce as a celebration of the sausage-maker and their hard work. Or at least a really quick way to make a very flavourful ragu.

This week we left the eggs in the fridge and the pasta machine in the cupboard, and made some good old flour and water casarecce. None of that fiddling around with egg to egg-yolk ratios and oil to water moisture levels; just two ingredients and our hands.

There was a time, many years ago as a young kid, when I knew the people that sold us our food. I could walk to the orchard at the end of the street for a box of fruit and veg, head off in my stroller with my nonna to collect eggs from around the corner, trade a bucket of loquats from the man two houses down.

This week’s pasta, with its paired sauce, is one big celebration of honouring your ingredients, and enjoying the histories of the dishes that you cook. With a hint of the unconventional and a touch of cultural fusion! A few weeks ago we made some tasty four cheese fagottini in beef bone broth. Whilst those little chaps owe their shape to Turkish manti, this week’s meaty sacchettoni filling takes its inspiration from them.