A pasta sauce doesn't need to include a bunch of fancy ingredients, or take a lot of time, to dazzle at dinnertime.
The sausage and pear ravioli recipe from Francine Segan, author of one of my favorite pasta cookbooks, "Pasta Modern," is but one delectable example. It follows in the footsteps of famed Italian chef Gualtiero Marchesei, who in the 1980s introduced the idea of ravioli aperti, or "open ravioli."
Instead of being stuffed inside wontons or dough pockets, Segan's meat and pear filling is used as a free-form sauce for fresh or dried pasta. The combination of salty bacon, sweet Italian sausage and fresh pear is much richer than a classic tomato sauce. It's especially suited to fall, when we crave comfort food. Raisins, cinnamon and sage build on the autumnal notes, and there's a sweet finishing crunch from crushed amaretti cookies.
The original recipe calls for adding 1/4 pound of sliced roast beef but I doubled the amount of bacon instead.
