Vicarious post for Rhett:
I have a new menu board...a pic is on my project blog, anyway, I had written a menu for the week. For today, Sunday, I wrote "Rhett's cooking". The next day I noticed he'd filled in his plan for dinner: "fasting". Ha ha Rhett. So I left it up there, waiting to see what he would do, and not really minding if I had to cook in the end. But at 5pm he hopped up and I found him chopping onions in the kitchen wearing an apron. Way to go Rhett!
Most often he makes pasta, which is his cooking comfort zone. Tonight's dish was delicious and the new ingredient was great even though I was skeptical--mandarin oranges. He named is Pasta el Rio. Here it is.
Pasta el Rio (no idea why he chose this name)
3/4 med. onion
3 cloves garlic
1/4 to 1/2 c. olive oil
1/2 c. sliced olives
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
1 (8 0z) can tomato sauce
small handful fresh basil, chopped (or dried to taste...approx 3 T)
1 (11 oz) can mandarin oranges, drained
1 lb pasta (we had bow tie and zitti mix)
Chop onion and garlic and saute in olive oil over medium-low heat until caramelized. Make sure it isn't too hot to brown them, you just sweat them to cook the onion flavor out and they sweeten in the oil, about 10 min. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and olives and simmer. Add the chopped basil and let the sauce simmer for at least 30 minutes, allowing a lot of the liquid to cook out. Boil salted water and cook pasta according to directions. Drain. At this point the sauce should have simmered a while and is done. Combine the hot pasta, sauce and mandarin oranges and stir to coat evenly. The heat and force of stirring should basically shred the oranges and they should kind of disintegrate into the pasta. Salt to taste and serve with parmesan cheese on top.
I have to admit when I was walking in and out of the kitchen while Rhett was cooking I noticed the opened can of oranges and finally asked him if they were going in the pasta. When he said yes, in my head I was thinking "are you crazy? Hot marinara-ish pasta with orange chunks in it?" But I kept quiet and waited for the finished result before I passed judgement and it was really good! The oranges were non-existent from looking at it, occasionally you would find a little pulp bulb, but no big orange chunks anywhere, but they added a slight sweetness that was really good. I don't know if this was an amazing dish, or the shock at finding out I really liked it with the mandarins in it. Anyway, blah blah blah. I was really impressed w/ Rhett's culinary skills tonight...and I think it ended up better than he expected also.
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