It was Friday night and it had cooled down quite considerably from the previous days. I happened to be at lunch with some friends from work - just somewhere cheap - and when reading the menu I notice that they were good enough to suggest what wine you should enjoy with your meal. It was at that moment that I got a craving for a good red wine. Bit of a problem as I was already enjoying a beer and the red wines available at this establishment was not ideal. I promised myself a nice bottle of red with dinner.
After visiting the bottle shop on the way home I walked in the door wondering what to cook to go with the wine. This reminded me of a favourite Saturday lunch venue - Il Baretto - which serves amazing Italian.
Italian it was then - a nice rich sauce layered over torn lasagne sheets with salty bacon pieces. YUM!
Ingredients for this were: Italian canned tomatoes (the sauce with the tomatoes is richer and thicker than others), half a red capsicum, garlic, dried oregano leaves, onion, dried lasagna sheets, bacon rashers, fresh basil, pine nuts and achicken stock cube.
Preparation:
This is really easy. Place the capsicum under a hot grill until the skin is charred. Cover with a tea towels for a few minutes and the skin should peal off easily - but watch your fingertips as they are hot. Roughly chop the capsicum flesh.
Chop garlic and an onion finely. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the onion, garlic and a shake of dried oregano leaves. When the onion looks glassy, add two 400gram tins of tomatos, the cooked capsicum and a crumbled chicken stock cube. Cook on medium heat until the sauce is cooked through. Pour the sauce into a blender and use the pulse to make the sauce smoother - but not like tomato soup - it should still be a bit rough. Pour back into the pan, stir through chopped pine nuts and keep hot.
Break roughly a number of dried lasagna sheets into sizable pieces and boil some salted water in a wide saucepan. Add the lasagna pieces stirring to make sure they don't stick together. While this is cooking, fry about 6 rashers of bacon cut into thumbnail sized pieces.
Drain pasta when cooked. On each plate starting with a large spoonful of sauce, roughly layering alternate layers of pasta, sauce, bacon and fresh basil leaves finishing with basil. Season with cracked pepper and serve. We had a rocket salad as well, oh and a bottle or two of fantastic red.
dinnerlastnight rating: 8/10
Comments