On this very special edition of the med chef I come straight from Roma Italia to bring you a delicious dish inspired purely from the fresh ingredients from the market.
I apologize in advance for the format since I'm thing this all from my phone.
To start off I bought a great bottle of sicilian wine, (the nero d'avola) which made me gear this meal in a sicilian vein. The great thing is most if the wine is under $10 or less. The even better part is every thing I buy here is a third if the price is at home. This whole meal cost at most $20 to $30.
The apartment my friend and I rented came fully equipped with a while kitchen and the essentials (at least for an italian). They had some fine salt as well as coarse grain sea salt. Some delicious olio di oliva (extra virgin and organic). They even take mention of separating organic material from plastic and regular garbage.
All the ingredients were bought at the Salumeria (the pancetta, sopressata, and fior di late mozzarella) and the supermercato and open air market.
I started out sauteing the onions and putting the water up for the fresh pasta. The pasta was fresh trofie which are like little twists that held the sauce in its tight little winds ever so gently imparting the flavor of the sauce.
Once the onions started going I added carrots then dime diced pancetta. I then added some diced eggplant and some tomato paste. At this point I dropped the pasta and added some of the salted pata water to the sauce to thicken it up along with a quarter to half cup of the Nero D'avola vino.
The pasta at this point was coming together quite nicely. The only thing was they had ran out if pepper! Do what did I do...I cut up some sopressata and added it to the dish so that its peppery goodness could kick the dish up to where it needed to be.
In the mean time I whipped up a little antipasto of fresh mozzarella, sopressata, and shaved pecorino cheese.
I also made a quick salad of fresh orgasmic spinach, carrots, cucumber and mozzarella. I would of also added almonds and forgot to add the fresh tomatoes I bought as well...but I don't think I'll starve.
I then incorporated the pasta with the sauce to marry the flavor of both items. A sprinkle of pecorino (which I MacGyver'ed a grader out of a slotted metal spoon) and we had ourselves a first class Roman grown, Sicilian style, fully Italian meal!
Many thanks to my friend Milena for asking me to come on this trip and enjoying the meal with me!
Buon appetito!
