Those that know me understand my passion for food. A good meal is one of my favorite things on this Earth. In addition to traveling and dining at some of the most amazing restaurants in the country, I also like to cook for myself at home. Usually I’m a “make-it-from-scratch” kind of guy, but sometimes I take a shortcut or two.
Tonight I made pasta with Rao’s Homeade Marinara Sauce. It was one of the best pasta dishes I’ve had in a long time. Here’s what I did:
First, I pan-fried an Italian sausage until it was brown. Then I cut it into bit-sized pieces and set it aside. Next, I chopped some red bell peppers and onions and sauteed them in the same pan I had cooked the sausage with a bit of olive oil. When they were just about cooked I added some finely sliced garlic and the sausage I cooked earlier. After browning the garlic and cooking the sausage through, I added the Rao’s Marinara Sauce. I simmered it on low heat for about 10 minutes and served it with bucatini pasta.
For those unaware, Rao’s is a legendary Italian restaurant in Harlem. It’s nearly impossible to get a table. Ever. They’ve since opened another location in Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace that replicates the New York location almost identically. They’ve become such legend among foodies, they’ve started offering jarred sauce at retail outlets across the country.
Rao’s sauce consists of pretty simple ingredients. It contains only Imported tomatos, olive oil, onions, salt, garlic, basil, black pepper and oregano. This is truly one of the cases where the end-result is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
This is an admittedly unusual entry on my blog. Even though I obsess about food daily, I never write about it here. I am not in any way affiliated with Rao’s and I don’t receive any compensation for writing about their sauce, but this meal was so good I felt compelled to share it with you in the hopes that you might try it.
The sauce is available at most major grocery chains – at least here in Santa Barbara. At $7.00 per jar, it’s not cheap, but you could easily feed 4-6 adults on a single jar of sauce – that’s pretty reasonable.
If any of you actually try the sauce, I’d love to know what you think. Am I smoking crack or is it really that good? For those interested, I paired it with a 2007 Estate Pinot Noir from Melville Winery.