i don't have many full fledged dishes that i keep in constant rotation. but one that i keep coming back to as a quick easy meal is a simple tomato pasta sauce. it's perfect for a weeknight meal when you want something to throw together quickly, or perhaps on the weekend when the cook has had a couple glasses of wine and realizes she needs to put something together with relative ease (not speaking from experience, of course).
beside the quickness of this recipe, the other thing i love about it is that the ingredients are ones that i almost always have on hand.
start by putting a pot of water on to boil for the pasta. i prefer to use penne for this recipe, but this evening only had spaghetti on hand.
while the water is heating prepare the following ingredients:
- 1 jar of tomato pasta sauce (i've used everything from just a can of tomatoes to some homemade sauce i canned from my garden tomatoes)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 to 3 cloves of garlic, diced
- 1 hot pepper, diced
- can of sardines (i've also done this recipe with 1 can of anchovies. the anchovies tend to disperse more evenly, so if you are turned off by chunks of sardines, it may be a better option)
- 1-2 tbsp of capers (i think this is essential to the sauce)
- grated parmesan (parmesan reggiano of course...life is too short to use any other type of parm. life is also too short to eat cheap chocolate, but that's for another post)
while the water is boiling, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a pan. add chopped garlic and hot peppers and cook for about a minute. add the onions and saute for another 8 minutes or so. after about 10 minutes, the water should be boiling, so you can add the pasta. while the pasta cooks, add the tomatoes to the onions. when the pasta has about 3 minutes left to cook, add the sardines (i usually drain off some of the oil from the can) and add the capers. stir the mixture and break up the sardines. when the pasta is done, drain it and then add it to the tomato sauce. serve with freshly grated parmesan.
