Friday Pasta Friday! Pasta!

Andrea requested pasta last night (we'd been doing rice all week), so pasta we made. We had spags with mushroom sauce, italian sausage, steamed broccoli with "lemogrette", and a big green salad.

For the sauce I used 4 or 5 cloves of sliced garlic, a diced onion, some finely diced country ham, canned tomatoes, mixed dried mushrooms (from TJ's), red wine, crushed chili pepper, rosemary, and marjoram. I followed the standard prep approach and let things simmer for a good hour.

We ate the sauce over spags, topped with a good hit of parsley, freshly grated parmesan, and a drizzle of truffle oil (to complement the mushrooms). We had the sausage (pan fried) on the side.

The lemogrette (my new word for a vinaigrette made with lemon juice instead of vinegar) for the broccoli consisted of a small clove of garlic made into a paste with salt and allowed to stand for 5 minutes or so to mellow, good olive oil, and meyer lemon juice. This emulsified quite easily and went really well with the broccoli and a grind of black pepper.