I Made Dinner Tonight

We take turns making dinner. Whoever does the cooking, the other one washes the dishes afterward.

Tonight I made pasta with a different (for me) sauce. Different because I used white wine instead of red in the sauce, and some beef bullion. I like what the white wine did to the sauce, color wise, and also taste-wise, compared to the red. So from now on I'm doing my sauce with white wine instead.

Stupid me, I forgot to take pictures, but the sauce had a kind of reddish-orange tinge to it, instead of the bright red or brick red my sauce usually has. Had to be the white wine.

I also had the idea of placing a sardine on a piece of prosciutto, with a bit of Parmesan sprinkled in there, then rolling it up like a burrito. When everything was almost finished, I put the sardine-prosciutto roll in the sauce to let it warm up / melt the cheese.

It came out pretty good, if I have to say so myself. (B agreed.)

Here's how it happened, in case you want to try it.

INGREDIENTS: (this served two people, with a bit left over)

• two medium onions, chopped
• four cloves garlic, chopped
• a bell pepper, sliced into thin strips about 2 inches long, 1/2 inch wide (I think an orange or yellow one would be pretty)
• about a Tablespoon of good bullion like the Better Than Bullion brand (thanks Soartstar for turning me on to this stuff; delicious and good quality!) I used beef but you could use veggie or chicken...
• five or six small tomatoes, like cherry tomatoes, sliced into small pieces (again, yellow or orange ones would be pretty)
• a can of diced or whole tomatoes
• olive oil
• white wine
• pasta
• prosciutto
• sardines
• Parmesan cheese (NOT that shit in the green can, I mean REAL cheese of good quality)
• white wine (don't buy expensive stuff here, just decent...the stuff in the box would work)
• oregano (fresh if possible)

Pour about 1/8 cup of olive oil into a small pot or big skillet. Turn the fire to about a 4 or 5 on a 10-is-max stove. Add the chopped onions and bell pepper.

Let the onions get translucent, then add the chopped tomatoes and the can of tomatoes. If the canned tomatoes are whole, kind of chop them up to bite size with a spatula.

Add about a half cup of wine and the Tbsp. of bullion paste and the chopped garlic.

Now let this rather soupy mixture cook down and get thick. Adjust your fire so nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan / skillet, which it shouldn't right now because everything's more like a soup at this stage.

The trick, I think, is to give your sauce a lot of time for all the flavors to mix well. I cook it down until it's kind of thick, and here's how I test thickness: if you're cooking in a pot, put a wooden spoon in the middle and let it go. If it more or less stands up without falling over, that's a good thickness. If you're cooking in a skillet, run a spatula down the center, making a "ditch" in the middle of the sauce. If the sauce more or less stays on either side, as if you parted the Red Sea, that's a good thickness. If you see anything that looks like red water, THE SHIT AIN'T THICK ENOUGH. You want nice thick sauce, not soup.

When it gets to this thickness, I add another half cup or so of white wine and let it cook down yet again. What's the rush? Drink a coupla glasses of wine, like I do. It makes the wait worthwhile.

Taste the sauce every so often. You'll have to add some salt, but don't go crazy. Keep tasting as it cooks, because sometimes the salt goes up with the steam as the sauce cooks down. I like it to where I can tell there's salt in the sauce, but just barely. If it's easy to tell there's salt in there, it's probably too much.

Get your water boiling for the pasta when you think the sauce is about ten minutes from being cooked down to the right thickness for the second time. Don't worry if you time it wrong----if it thickens up before the pasta is done, throw a bit more wine in there to keep the stuff from sticking to the bottom of the pan, and let it cook down.

Take a piece of prosciutto and put a sardine in it sideways to the length of the prosciutto, and add a bit of grated Parmesan (or any cheese you like, WTF.) Roll the prosciutto up and if you need to, stick a toothpick through it to hold it together. Make one or two of these for each person you'll be serving.

When the pasta is about two minutes from being done, and the sauce is thick and bubbling, put the prosciutto / sardine roll in the sauce so it can get hot. Add your oregano to the sauce at this time.

Drain the pasta when it's finished, put it in a bowl, add the sauce to the top or side, then put the prosciutto / sardine roll on the other side or on the top or however the fuck you want to arrange it to satisfy your artistic sensibilities.

Top with a bit of grated Parmesan, pour a glass of wine, and start gobbling.

NOTE TO MY PAISANS, MOD, MICHELA, and PATRIZIA:

Tell me what I did wrong. Probably everything. But it tasted OK, if not exactly authentico.

But you guys are more Italian than me. I'm willing to learn. Especially if you do the cooking.