Last week I committed culinary sacrilege by making a white pasta sauce with red wine. I followed up my crime this week by making a red tomato sauce with champagne. Yes, you heard me right. Champagne! The remnants of what we brought new year’s eve in.
I normally steer clear of tomato based sauces in restaurants as I don’t like them. They are supposed to be healthier. They don’t work for me.
I decided to make a pasta in the mould of Spaghetti Bolougnaise. I skipped the spaghetti as Kainaz doesn’t like it. I used a mix of penne and spirali.
I can’t begin to tell you how good it turned out to be. Kainaz, the pasta freak, skipped on the sofa in joy. I took a bite and wondered why restaurants can’t make tomato based pastas based like this. The pasta sat just right in the sauce. Neither out shouted the other. The sauce was playful. It was mildly tangy, mildly sweet. And yes, very bubbly.
It was good to see my cooking Mojo work in the new decade too. Or was it the champagne? Or the love of our friend, with the biggest smile in the universe, who brought us the the champagne? Weighty questions but what I do know is that I like tomato based sauces now.
Here’s my first recipe of 2010
Pasta in champagne sauce:
- Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a nonstick pan
- Add a tablespoon of finely chopped garlic cloves. Let this fry till you get the aroma of garlic
- Add 250 g of chicken mince. I know that chicken mince is not real mince but they say its healthy
- Stir this. A bit of water will came out. I poured this out and added a bit more olive oil. You could let it be to as this can be the base for the sauce
- Add half a cup of tomato puree. I normally use pulp of fresh tomato but felt a bit lazy last evening
- Toss this with a ladle. Add half a teaspoon of sugar, one tablespoon of salt and one teaspoon of crushed black pepper.
- Add a tablespoon of corn flour to thicken the sauce and stir
- Add a tablespoon of fresh rosemary
- Add one glass of champagne. Any white or red would do too I am sure. Boil it on high flame till the sauce thickens
- Add in the boiled pasta (150 g)
- Toss it so that the sauce spreads evenly over the pasta.
- A couple of minutes on the pan and you are done
- I added some crumbled Cheddar on the pasta after I plated it
Today we complete an year in this house. I can’t think of anything for today which can top last night’s aristocratic treat though.
