Yesterday I spent a fair amount of my time down in the basement watching playoff football. Unfortunately, the team I was rooting for really blew it. Fortunately, my wife was upstairs making dinner ... and timed it perfectly when she brought it down to cheer me up. Now I'm really glad she wanted to buy that dinner tray. It makes perfect sense to me: she wanted to cater to my natural couch potato ways. ;-)
She was upstairs making a marinara sauce from scratch. This starts by combining two cans of diced tomatoes with a tbsp of tomato paste. Then she adds oregano, parsley, basil, salt, pepper, and a bay leaf. Then add some red wine and minced garlic. Let this cook down for a while to develop the flavors and to cook off some of the wine. You can sift out the bay leaf when you're done, or you can play a fun game of "Who gets a bay leaf in their mouth?" when you're eating.
Gnocchi is a potato pasta that looks like little bitty dumplings. The dough is rolled out into a long roll, and then cut into bite-sized little rounds. I really like them because they are plump and chewy. It's a very gratifying pasta. They're like delicious little pillows.
A glass of red wine (a bonus of cooking with wine: you usually have an open bottle to drink with dinner), a Caesar salad, and some warm pasta with homemade marinara was a perfect way to forget about a crummy football game. Thanks honey. You're the best!
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