The Spicy Tomato Sauce

This recipe is loosely-based on a recipe from Gourmet I found on Epicurious.

Spicy Tomato Sauce
1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes
1 large onion (diced)
3 garlic cloves (minced)
2 tbsps unsalted butter
28 ounce can of plain tomato sauce
2 dried red chilies
salt
pepper
3 sprigs fresh thyme

Heat a small pot of water until boiling. Add sun-dried tomatoes and remove from heat. Soak 30 minutes.

During the soaking process, soften the onion and garlic over low heat in the butter. Stir occasionally. When soft, add the canned tomato sauce, thyme, chilies, salt, and pepper. Simmer for 30 minutes. During the 30 minutes start your pasta boiling. Cook according to directions.

Drain pasta, remove sauce from heat, and spoon over pasta to serve.

Sun-dried tomatoes are a favourite of mine.

The onion. 

Tomatoes soaking. 

Diced onion and minced garlic. 

The tomatoes after a half hour. 

Softening onions and garlic. 

My wine for the evening. Only $8 and incredibly good. 

The final product was spicy, but not overly so, with a bit of an overpowering tomato flavour. I might try whole, peeled tomatoes next time. 

Your soundtrack for this entry: Black Sabbath - Paranoid.

The Lamb Chops and Dandelion Greens

I absolutely love lamb and my recent poor experience at Astoria's Kabab Café inspired me to cleanse my mental palate by pulling out an unblogged dinner from a few months ago. Now, at the end of this piece you'll notice that the final dish contains roasted and diced sweet potatoes. I'm not including the recipe for that because I feel they didn't come out well.

Unlike the lamb and dandelion greens which came out SUPERBLY!


Lamb Chops
2 loin lamb chops
salt (to taste)
pepper (to taste)

Dandelion Greens
4 cups of red bitter dandelion greens (stem ends removed)
2 red chilies (crushed)
1 tsp salt


These are red chilies that I dried myself. Here's how I dry chili peppers.

These are crushed, dried red chilies. You can tell because I'm pointing at them. 

These are my lamb chops. If they were lamp chops they'd look a little brassier.  Coat in fresh ground pepper and salt and let sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

These are red bitter dandelion greens. 

These are red bitter dandelion greens boiling in a pot. 

When they've boiled down for about a minute, add the crushed red pepper and salt and cook for one more minute, stirring every few seconds. 

Heat a cast iron skillet on high and cook the lamb chops for about two minutes a side.

Share and enjoy. 

Your soundtrack for this entry: Amesoeurs - Heurt