Oh, YUM!
After all of my whining about slicing and juice everywhere, I’ve discovered that dehydrating vegetables is paying off in a serious fashion. I made the best pasta sauce I’ve ever made last
night, and I mostly wasn’t paying attention while I did it… So I’m going to root around in my brain to find the list of ingredients for my newly named Puttanesca Asciutto.
- 1 c. dried tomatoes, chopped
- 1. 5 c. boiling hot water
- 1/2 c. white wine
- 1 cup chopped kalamata olives (mine were stuffed with jalapenos, which is why I didn’t use any pepper. You might add a 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper to your sauce.)
- 1 whole chopped onion
- 2 cloves smashed garlic, OR 1 tbsp. garlic powder
- 2 basil leaves, julienned
- some capers, if you like them. I don’t.
And from there, it was simply a matter of feeling my way into a recipe: I stuffed the tomatoes into a pot, poured on the water, and waited twenty minutes. Then I dumped them into the blender, and added the other ingredients. I whizzed them up, and cooked them down for ten minutes, until some of the water cooked out. It’s a chunky, fragrant, flavor-intense sauce that would work well on short pasta with a dry asiago cheese, or on a pizza; with some meat, probably, or as a breadstick dip — endless possibilities.
And, best of all, I will whine no more about the endless tomatoes in the garden.
Until next year.
No – you’ll whine about the OTHER vegetables … and you mayn’t whine next weekend when we pull them out & harvest all of the green ones … but I strongly suspect that’s only because we’ll have a deep-freeze by then & won’t have to make chutney & mincemeat right away.
Hrumph.