A pasta dish with the taste of the wine harvest

Don't be turned off by the thought of grapes and sausage with your pasta. It's a dish from Andrew Carmellini's new cookbook, "Urban Italian," and it makes complete sense.

"These are, in fact, all the flavours of the Italian grape harvest time: sage, meaty spicy sausage, and, of course, sweet young grape juice," he writes in the book. "I've just put it all together. It's totally delicious. Trust me."

If you can't find strozzapreti pasta, which resembles small, twisted strands of rope, any small, thin pasta will do.

Strozzapreti With Sausage, Grapes and Red Wine

250 ml (1 cup) seedless red grapes (not Thompson), halved lengthwise

250 ml (1 cup) dry red wine

50 ml ( 1/4 cup) sugar

30 ml (2 tbsp) red wine vinegar

500 g (1 lb) dried strozzapreti pasta (or other small, thin pasta)

45 ml (3 tbsp) olive oil

750 g (1 1/2 lb) Italian sausage (about 4 links, 2 spicy and 2 sweet), casings removed and meat roughly chopped

1 medium yellow onion, chopped (about 1 cup)

10 fresh sage leaves, roughly chopped

30 ml (2 tbsp) butter

125 ml ( 1/2 cup) grated pecorino cheese, plus extra for sprinkling

2 ml ( 1/2 tsp) coarsely ground black pepper

15 ml (1 tbsp) chopped Italian parsley

In a medium bowl, combine grapes, wine, sugar and vinegar. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, then refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.

When ready to cook, bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil.

While water heats, transfer grape mixture to a medium saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil and cook until liquid has reduced by half, about 10 minutes.

When water has boiled, add pasta and cook until just al dente (about 1 minute less than the suggested cooking time on the pasta packaging).

While pasta cooks, in a large saucepan over medium, heat olive oil. Add meat and saute until it just starts to brown, 3 to 4 minutes, stirring and breaking up the meat as you go.

Add onion and continue cooking, stirring well, until sausage and onion have cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes. Add sage and stir to combine.

Add grape mixture and stir well.

When pasta is cooked, drain it, but do not rinse it. Add pasta to pot with grape and sausage mixture. Place over medium heat for about 1 1/2 minutes to allow flavours to blend and pasta to cook a bit more.

Remove pan from heat and add butter, cheese, black pepper and parsley. Sprinkle with more cheese and serve immediately.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Source: "Urban Italian" by Andrew Carmellini (Bloomsbury USA, 2008).