Pasta And Appetizer

Made a little appetizer of pan fried oysters, hard boiled egg and beetroot salad. Later I made this nice pasta.

These are fresh beets which I love. I mixed them with a little garlic, red wine vinegar and olive oil and added a few slices of red onion and salt and pepper of course. This is a great little salad. The oysters are from Willipa Bay in Washington. I breaded them and fried them in a mixture of olive oil and butter then squeezed a little lime juice over them as they were cooking. The tartar sauce is fresh and the recipe is with the fish and chips post. This is a great little appetizer. The advantage of having an appetizer is that it stops you from picking while you are cooking the main meal. Sometime you pick so much that you don't feel like eating anymore.

The pasta is a rigatoni with spicy italian sausage. Rigatoni is by far my favorite pasta. This is an olive oil based sauce with tomatoes, mushrooms and some chopped parsley. Garlic too of course.

The trick of doing a good pasta is to have all your ingredients ready in advance ( as with all mediterranean dishes ) and add them incrementally so that they are all cooked at the same time. Always add a little garlic at the end even if you have done so during the cooking. It refreshes the flavor. It is a good idea to add a little of the herb that you have used at the end too. Some of these flavors get lost in the cooking and need waking up at the end. You will find that your pasta dishes are more alive if you do this.