Frugal Food

Here's a recipe that I made up recently, based on the meagre ingredients I had to hand - my fresh herbs on the porch really came in useful. Basically, it’s a poor man’s penne alla bosciaola, but it turned out to be rather tasty. (If you want to make the real deal - penne alla bosciaola - just add pancetta or bacon and porcini mushrooms or shitake mushrooms)



Penne all’ indigente

Ingredients.

Olive oil
Salt
Pepper (lots and lots)
Some Parmesan cheese (to taste – no such thing as too much in my opinion)
A few tablespoons of cooking wine (or dry sherry, dry vermouth etc)
One bowl of penne (I use Barilla or DeCecco)
One shallot (roughly chopped)
One clove of garlic (crushed)
Two teaspoons of flour
Some thick cream (maybe a cup and a half?)
A few fresh sage leaves
Some fresh parsley for garnish

Soften the shallots over a medium heat in the olive oil. Then add the garlic and the sage and cook for a minute or two on medium heat, but don’t brown the garlic. Turn the heat up to high and then add the wine (or sherry or vermouth) to deglaze the pan. Allow to simmer, and boil off a little of the liquid, before adding the cream and turning the heat down to medium/low. Cook for a few minutes, then add the sieved flour and stir well. Season well with salt and pepper to taste. Allow the flour to cook and thicken the sauce, and when the sauce is nice and thick you’re done.


In the meantime, you should have boiled some water and cooked the pasta according to instructions (in general around 8-10 minutes). If you time it right, the sauce should take slightly less time that the pasta. Add the drained pasta to the sauce – mix well and serve with a heap of Parmesan cheese and a sprinkle of parsley and some fresh ground pepper.





Yum!

-Mr Ed.