Pasta and Red Sauce

With good, intense tomato flavor

Foreground: spinach salad, background: cavatappi with red sauce, and yes, I ate both with chopsticks.

I know, I know, everyone already has their own version of pasta and red sauce, and this might look boring, but lately, I've been making this variant of pasta and red sauce and have been very happy with the results. A few things make this different:

1. Flavors are developed like in a stew in which ingredients are browned in the pot, then removed, and the fond deglazed with the next ingredient. This involves deglazing with various veggies. Basically, you're using the water that comes out of the veggies as they cook to dissolve the fond from the bottom of the pan (use a good wooden spatula to dislodge the fond as the water comes out of the veggies). If the heat is too high, you won't get enough water for deglazing, so adjust the heat as necessary.

2. Here, I am using a small amount of meat as a flavoring, as is done in some Asian dishes such as mapo tofu.

3. Three kinds of tomatoes: canned crushed, fresh, and sun-dried.

4. As I often do with Italian cooking, I substitute a small amount of minced Chicago-style giardiniera (or the oil from the same) instead of black and/or red pepper

Pasta and Red Sauce

Ingredients

Sorry, but as usual, I don't really measure, so the quantities here are very vague. Feel free to adjust as you like. Note: amounts are for use with a whole box of pasta.

• Big can (28 oz) of crushed tomatoes

• 1-3 fresh tomatoes, cut into big pieces

• 1 rice bowl (about ½ cup) of sun-dried tomatoes

• 1-3 cloves of fresh garlic

• A small handful of fresh basil, chiffonade

• ¼-1 teaspoon of minced Chicago hot giardiniera, or oil from the same (use black and red pepper if you don't have it)

• A ¼-½ pound of bulk Italian sausage or one raw Italian sausage with the casing removed

• (Optional) one onion, chopped or thinly sliced

• (Optional) ½-1 pound sliced fresh mushrooms of your choice

• 1 box of pasta of your choice

• Salt

Directions

1. Start bringing your salted pasta water to a boil

2. Chop and slice whatever needs to be chopped or sliced

3. In a large pot, brown the bulk Italian sausage in a pot at medium to medium-high heat with some of the garlic. Depending on the heat, I leave it unmolested for 7 minutes at a time to get good browning. Stir and repeat as necessary. Remove sausage and fried garlic from the pot.

4. Deglaze the pan with onions and a bit of salt. As with the sausage, let the pot sit un-stirred for minutes at a time to develop browning. Get it fairly well caramelized to add sweetness to the red sauce. I prefer getting my sweetness from caramelized onions rather than sugar. Remove from pot.

5. Turn the heat down to medium-low and deglaze the fond from the pot with your sliced mushrooms a little salt, and more of your chopped garlic. Again, make sure you brown the mushrooms by leaving it on the heat for minutes at a time between stirring. If you don't get browning on the mushrooms, it's not sautéed, but stewed.

6. Leave the mushrooms in the pot and deglaze with your fresh tomatoes.

7. Once the fond from the mushrooms is dissolved, add the remaining ingredients except for pasta and basil

8. Simmer for as much or as little time as you like. The more, the better, but if you don't have time, it'll still taste good.

9. Cook the pasta for a minute less than the package says. Add the pasta, a little pasta water, and the fresh basil to the pot, and cook and stir thoroughly for about a minute.

10. Kill the heat and serve.

For the love of fun, buy parmesan or romano in block form and grate it yourself.