Red wine pasta

 

When icicles grace the garage, the snow never seems to stop and the streets are skating rinks, it's clearly time to open a bottle of hearty red and serve it along side comfort food. This one has the bottle of red built in for convenience.

Red wine pasta

Adapted from Bon Appetit, Dec. 2019. I didn’t really intend to adapt this, merely to cut it in half, but I spaced on the first bit and chopped up the 12 cloves of garlic for the full recipe. I went ahead and used it, and I think it was a good call because otherwise I’m not sure it would be a detectable component.

Ingredients

1½ tablespoons olive oil

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, divided

12 garlic cloves, finely chopped

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 bottle dry red wine

1 pound bucatini or other long pasta

Grated Parmesan cheese for garnish

Method

Heat a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add olive oil, 1 tablespoon of butter, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until garlic is fragrant but not brown. Add wine and increase heat to medium-high, boiling until wine is reduced by two thirds, about 20 minutes or so.

Cook pasta until it’s almost al dente. Drain and add to wine sauce along with remaining 7 tablespoons of butter.  Toss together and simmer sauce until pasta is al dente,  well coated and sauce is thickened, about 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt. Garnish with grated Parmesan. Serves 4.

Rating: I might up the crushed red pepper flakes next time, but overall it was tasty. And since I always have butter, garlic and red wine in the house, it's a great pantry-friendly meal. Which is great when the streets are buffed to a lethal sheen.