Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Rachael Ray's Drunken Tuscan Pasta


OK... Next time it comes down to drinking a bottle of wine or boiling pasta in it I'm going to go with my gut instinct.

Just drink it.

Rachael Ray's recipe for Drunken Tuscan Pasta has always kind of intrigued me. The pasta recipe was in her Express Lane Meals cookbook

Surely, pasta boiled in a bottle of red wine must be packed with plenty of flavor. She actually made a risotto version of this dish on her Iron Chef appearance (she and Mario Batali went up against Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis... Mario and Rachael won).

But is it really worth a bottle of vino?

I caved on this belief over the weekend, and only because I had a nearly full bottle of wine I opened before my Christmas vacation and never finished. After it sat about a week, what else was I going to do with it?

Maybe using wine that's been open that long detracts from the flavor. But aside from turning the pasta a magnificent fuchsia color, the flavor I got wasn't worth a full bottle.

Don't get me wrong. The pasta is tasty, with the peppery flavors of escarole and pancetta. But I don't think it was any better than other pastas I've made with this ingredient combo.

Can't blame me for trying.

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