Sausage Penne Marinara

Year five. Done. Two hundred and sixty weeks. Five full years since the dark kitchen in Antioch. Five years of cornbread and parking lots and babies and degrees and men who leave and men who stay from a distance and a mother who holds everything together and children who grow faster than the time it takes to feed them. Five years. The number is both impossible and inevitable — impossible that it's been this long, inevitable that it would be.

If I could talk to the Sarah of Week 1 — and I can, because she's still in me, she never left — I'd say: the dark kitchen becomes a lit one. The two kids become three. The Waffle House apron becomes scrubs becomes a whole life that you built with your hands. The man at the church function leaves but doesn't disappear. A pandemic comes and you survive it. A baby comes and you deliver it during the pandemic. Your mother stands in a parking lot and hears the first cry through a phone and your daughter makes chicken parmesan at nine and your son reads five words and your youngest walks holding a coffee table and all of it — all of it — happened one week at a time. One cornbread at a time. One meal at a time. You showed up. Every morning. Every kitchen. Every time. And the showing up was enough. The showing up was everything.

Spring is here. The dogwoods. The crocuses. I drove by the Antioch house — habit, nostalgia, the need to see the crocuses in the yard where I grew up. They're purple. Still purple. Still stubborn. Still pushing through the cold ground because that's what they do. That's what I do. That's what every Mitchell woman does.

Elijah will be one in two weeks. The baby born during COVID, during protests, during the strangest year, will turn one. He walks now — three, four, five steps before sitting down. He says "mama" and "no" and "da" (for Jayden, who takes tremendous offense at being called "da" instead of his actual name but answers to it anyway because Elijah said it and Elijah's words are sacred when they're that new and that few).

I made spring vegetable pasta. Again. The year-closing tradition. Penne, asparagus, peas, lemon, garlic, parmesan. Year one: Antioch, alone. Year two: Hermitage, new. Year three: Hermitage, Terrence on the couch. Year four: pandemic, pregnant, phone calls. Year five: three kids at the table, Mama visiting without a mask, Chloe helping cook (she made the garlic bread — from SCRATCH, not store-bought, because Chloe Mitchell does not settle for store-bought when scratch is an option), and the pasta on the plate and the light through the window and the tradition that holds. Five years. Five pastas. Five versions of the same woman, each one stronger than the last. Year five. Done. Onward. Always, always onward.

Five years of this pasta means five versions of me standing at a stove — alone in Antioch, cautious in Hermitage, exhausted and pregnant, and finally, this year, surrounded. The recipe I reach for every time is a sausage penne marinara: the kind with deep garlic, a sauce that coats every piece of pasta, and parmesan that melts in before you even hit the table. Chloe made the garlic bread from scratch this year — scratch, because that’s who she is — and it was exactly right next to this bowl. If you’re marking something — a year, a hard season, a quiet victory — this is the pasta that holds the occasion.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb penne pasta
1 lb Italian sausage (mild or hot), casings removed
1 (24 oz) jar marinara sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Salt and black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup reserved pasta water
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
Fresh basil or flat-leaf parsley, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook penne according to package directions until al dente. Before draining, reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water. Drain and set aside.
Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook, breaking it into crumbles with a wooden spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 7–8 minutes. Drain excess fat if needed, leaving about 1 tablespoon in the pan.
Sauté aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add diced onion to the pan and cook until softened, about 3 minutes. Add minced garlic, Italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes (if using). Stir and cook 1 minute more, until fragrant.
Add the sauce. Pour in the marinara sauce and stir to combine with the sausage and aromatics. Add 1/4 cup of the reserved pasta water to loosen the sauce. Simmer over medium-low heat for 8–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Combine. Add the drained penne to the skillet and toss to coat thoroughly in the sauce. If the sauce feels thick, add a splash more of the reserved pasta water and stir until the pasta is well coated and glossy.
Finish with Parmesan. Remove from heat. Stir in 1/2 cup grated Parmesan until melted into the sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve. Divide into bowls and top with additional Parmesan and fresh basil or parsley if desired. Serve immediately alongside garlic bread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sausage Penne Marinara — The Pasta That Marks Every Year