Quasi L'estate

About a year and a half ago, I went to Italy with my grandparents. Lake Garda – Gardasee –, at the edge of the Dolomites, is about a four hour drive south-east of their house in Bavaria, where I was visiting, and Monika suggested it would make a nice excursion. Y’know, just pop down to Italy for the weekend, like you do. Not a suggestion I’m apt to turn down. So we did, and it was indeed a lovely weekend. I discovered I’m terrible at windsurfing – Garda’s apparently a mecca for it, with reliable winds off the mountains, but I spent more time in the lake righting my board than upright on it, and kudos to my instructor for his patience with that. I got caught on the summit of Monte Baldo in a thunderhail storm, and made it to shelter soaked through, muddy, and barefoot – slippery wet sandals are slippery – just as the deluge let up. (Did I mention this was August?) And on our last day there, Monika decided we should drive out to Valpolicella to find a vineyard and taste/buy some wines. After a lot of winding down dirt roads through rows of vines, we found a guy who said he’d let us into his winery, just let him drive home and get the key to open the place up. So we had our own private tasting, except he poured us nearly full glasses instead of tastes, and the wine was delicious, and Monika bought a case. Driving back to Torbole, where we were staying, it got to be around dinner time, so we stopped at a hotel on the mountainside to eat. I ordered a pasta dish with roasted tomatoes, sausage, and sage. It was phenomenal.

Skip ahead to January, in the depths of a Philly winter. I have in my fridge a jar of roasted tomatoes preserved in olive oil that my mother made last summer, when the garden was popping out tomatoes faster than they could possibly be eaten, and a box of really good pasta in the pantry. Time to recreate the Valpolicella dish. It’s not quite the same as August in the Dolomites, but damned if it doesn’t brighten up a grey East Coast afternoon.

Valpolicella Roasted Tomato-Sausage Pasta

2 links Italian pork sausage

Roasted tomatoes, roughly chopped**

Fresh sage, chopped

Garlic, minced

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Grated Romano cheese

Good-quality short pasta, like cavatelli or orecchietti

1) Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan. Crumble in the insides of the sausage, and brown.

2) Meanwhile, set some pasta water to boil. Cook the pasta to al dente while sauteeing other things.

3) Add the chopped tomatoes and garlic. Sautee until soft & fragrant. Add the sage, and cook a minute more. Put in a good dose of cheese, then salt & pepper to taste.

4) Add the cooked pasta and a splash of its water to the pan and toss everything to combine. Serve with more grated cheese, olive oil for drizzling, and Italian wine.

Stuff in a pan, before it becomes stuff on pasta.

**Roasted Tomatoes, or Summer in a Jar

Basically just follow Smitten Kitchen’s recipe:

In August, when there’s more tomatoes than you know what to do with, slice a pile of plum, cherry, or normal (not gigantic heirloom) tomatoes in half. Set them on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a bit of oregano or marjoram. Add a few whole smashed garlic cloves. Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil. Bake at ~225 for about three hours, until things get all caramelizedy around the edges. Store in a jar in the fridge, with olive oil high enough to cover everything.

If you didn’t plan ahead, or used up all of your tomatoes already, or whatever, you can use store-bought jars of tomatoes in oil  or sun-dried tomatoes soaked a for a bit in hot water to soften.