The Unofficial Cook

Here’s another meal I made to use up leftovers from my pantry.  This time I used a bottle of Merlot I’ve been using for cooking for a couple of months, canned tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and basil and bottled parmesan cheese.  It was surprisingly delicious and so easy to make.  I had more than enough Merlot so the sauce came out richly flavored. This had plenty of garlic but I still stashed a head of garlic in my luggage at the last minute!

Preparation was easy, just browned some Italian sweet sausages and threw in almost a whole head of peeled, crushed garlic.  Then I threw in a can of crushed tomatoes with basil and balsamic vinegar.  I let that stew for about half an hour and found my remaining 1/8 bottle of cooking merlot and threw that in.  At the last minute, I checked for seasoning like salt and pepper and more basil.  Then I mixed in a batch of cooked spaghetti noodles and served hot.  Since I was out of wine, we had this with beer and sat down to a World Series ballgame on TV.