Sprout & Pea

I’ve been want­ing to try this recipe for red wine pasta that I came across in Real Sim­ple for quite some time now. So, on my way home yes­ter­day I stopped into my local wine shop and asked for their cheap­est bot­tle of red (turns out my room­mate and I often pur­chase the mag­num size of their cheap­est red — we call this liv­ing on a bud­get in Brooklyn).

The recipe was sim­ple enough (pun intended?) and my friend Nicky thought it was pretty tasty:

We did both agree that it needed a bit of a kick so I added a few squeezes of actual lemon juice and a dash of gar­lic pep­per and this seemed to do the trick. The only other change I made to this was using quinoa lin­guini instead of reg­u­lar lin­guini. Sadly, the key ingre­di­ent — the red wine — was not a very appar­ent fla­vor in the dish. Maybe next time, I need to shell out some more dol­lars and invest in a slightly more flavor-​​packed bottle?

Here is the Real Sim­ple recipe:

Ingre­di­ents

• 1 pound dried linguine
• 2 table­spoons kosher salt
• 1/​2 bot­tle (1 1/​2 cups) red wine
• 1 1/​2 table­spoons extra-​​virgin olive oil
• 1/​3 cup (2 ounces) shaved Romano
• 1/​2 tea­spoon black pep­per, prefer­ably cracked
• 1 tea­spoon grated lemon zest

Direc­tions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the lin­guine and salt and cook for 7 minutes.
2. As the lin­guine cooks, bring the wine to a sim­mer in a small saucepan. Drain the lin­guine and return it to the pot. Pour the wine into the pot with the pasta and place it over medium-​​high heat. Cook, toss­ing occa­sion­ally, until the wine is almost com­pletely absorbed, about 5 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, add the oil, and toss. Divide the lin­guine among bowls and sprin­kle with the Romano, pep­per, and lemon zest.

(fancier bot­tle of wine pic­tured here)