Wine Pasta with Wine Garlic Sauce

[catherinecarney]

Hi all--

Just a quick, easy, and tasty pasta recipe. Great with mesclun type salad and crusty Italian bread.

For the pasta: Cook approx. 1 lb pasta (spaghetti, linguini, fettucini), in a 50/50 mix of salted water and dry red wine until al dente. Drain.

For the sauce: heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet. Add in two cloves minced garlic, one diced onion, about 1/4 cup each chopped parsley and celery, and 3 or 4 chopped paste type tomatoes (think Roma), salt and season to taste (usually needs some salt). Optional: sliced black olives, chopped mushrooms (mmm, Portabella), chopped pepperoncini or italian frying peppers. etc. Cook until veggies are tender but not soggy and add 1/4 cup red wine and stir in the drained cooked noodles to coat. Serve immediately with parmesan cheese (the fresh not pregrated stuff) on top. Serves 4-6.

The nice thing with this dish is that you can vary the sauce dramatically depending on what you toss into the basic oil/garlic/onion/tomato base. Stick with just veggies and it's a tasty vegetarian meal for many, cook italian sausage and use it instead of the oil and you've got a hearty meat dish. Add in chopped broccoli or broccoli raab....You get the idea!

Enjoy!

Catherine