The other day I found myself in my parent's kitchen looking for something to eat...and fairly quickly, as it had been several hours that I was waiting to eat. I looked in the fridge and saw leftover baked ziti, leftover sauce, and uncooked mushrooms and decided to throw it all together. I rewashed the mushrooms and cut them up small in the pan. I used some olive oil and a spoonful of leftover sauce as the base to cook down the mushrooms in.
Now when it comes to pasta sauce, I pretty much grew up on Ragu. Unless it was Christmas, or my birthday, or some other special occasion where my mom would make it from scratch with pork neck bones (my favorite). But as I've gotten older I've come up with quick ways to get the authentic tomato taste I like instead of the sugary processed taste of Ragu or Preggo off the shelf. This time I mixed a can of diced tomatoes and a can of crushed tomatoes in a pan with a touch of extra virgin olive oil and my love of seasonings (mrs dash, minced garlic, parsley, oregano, basil, (doesn't need much more salt) pepper, minced dry onions). So once the mushrooms cooked down and released their juices with the sauce, I threw in the leftover ziti (that had some leftover melted mozzarella in it, perfect) and the rest of the leftover sauce because....well, I like sauce. I threw a quick dash of garlic powder in just for good measure (Italians can never really have too much garlic am I right?) and let it bubble together and get nice and hot. I ended up loving it and so did my parents. I called it bolognese because I love bolognese and it was pretty much a bolognese with mushrooms instead of beef and it sure looks like a bolognese! haha. Looks like leftovers can be pretty good with the right amount of fresh love. Ciao.
