Pasta. with tomato sauce.

I love pasta. Usually, a jar of tomato sauce will do the trick, but we often put all sorts of crazy stuff into sauces, and that makes pasta even more delicious. Ed decided yesterday that he wanted to make a *really good* pasta sauce, with some of his smoked andouille sausage, and good bacon, and greek yogurt. When Ed says he wants to make something that's really good, I just step back and occasionally wash dishes, because you know it's going to turn out tasty. His experiments, on the other hand...

This ended up being a really creamy, tangy, smoky, delicious sauce. He finished the pasta in the pan, so it absorbed some of the saucy goodness, and it was so good I didn't even feel the need to smother everything in parmesan cheese. I guess it helps that we're basically out of cheese.

The sauce started with:
1 onion
a couple cloves of garlic
a can of tomato paste
a lot of rosemary
olive oil
kosher salt

Dice the onion, and throw that in a pan with some olive oil and salt. Let the onion sweat, and then add the garlic and rosemary. Once you can smell it, add all the tomato paste, stir that around, and let it cook for a bit - 5 minutes?
Once the tomato paste has cooked down a bit, add a can of diced tomatoes, and a bunch of fresh basil, that's been chiffonaded.

Meanwhile, get a big pot o' water boiling, with some salt in it.

Meanwhile, chop some bacon (good bacon) - maybe 3 pieces? and get that rendering in a separate pan. Chop some andouille sausage. I think we just used one link, but it may have been two.

Once the diced tomatoes have simmered for a little bit, pour all of the sauce, very carefully, into a blender, and blend it until it's a little more smooth. In other words, no more diced tomato chunks.


Stir in about a half cup of greek yogurt. Some cream would work here, too, if you didn't have greek yogurt, but we still have a good bit of that lying around.


Add the andouille, (ours was basically pre-cooked), and some smoked maple syrup, if you're lucky enough to own any of that, or smoked paprika, if you don't have smoked syrup. Add some smoked paprika anyway.

When the pasta is almost done, grab a cupful of the cooking water, set it aside, and drain the pasta. Pour it all into the sauce, and toss it around to coat. Add the pasta water if you need to thin things out.

Serve!



Short version:
Made enough for 4-6 regular people...
1 box pasta, fun shapes if possible
1 can diced tomatoes (16oz)
1 can tomato paste (little mini can, 6oz?)
4 cloves garlic
1 onion
~1C fresh basil, chiffonaded
1 link smoked andouille sausage
3 pieces good bacon
~2tbs rosemary
kosher salt
olive oil
1/2C greek yogurt (or cream, but probably less of it)
~1tsp smoked paprika, or 1tsp smoked maple syrup

-blender

Cook down the onion, add the garlic and rosemary, add the tomato paste. Get a pot of water boiling, with salt. Chop the bacon and get that rendering. Cook the andouille sausage if it isn't already. Add the diced tomatoes and all their juice, and the basil. Use a food processor or blender to chop everything up into a sauce-like texture. Return to heat, add bacon, sausage, paprika and/or syrup, and yogurt. Stir it around.

Get the pasta cooking. When it's basically done, reserve a cup of the cooking liquid, drain the pasta, and toss it in the pan with the sauce. Add the cooking liquid to thin things out if necessary.

Serve!