Pasta In Under the Wire

Ever have one of those days when you know exactly what you want to do for dinner and then...well, here's my sad story.

First of all it's Thursday and I thought I made pasta earlier in the week to send in to Rachel, The Crispy Cook who's hosting Presto Pasta Night this week...but I didn't . You can still squeak in if you're quick about it.

Anyway, I decided that I really wanted to make pasta with pancetta, arugula, sundried tomatoes, some of my delicious brined Moroccan olives. I had the pancetta, tomatoes and olives, lots of great Parmeggiano Reggiano cheese, garlic, olive oil. All that was missing was the arugula...shouldn't be hard to find. There are two grocery stores nearby. But as luck would have it, no arugula. I thought I had some baby spinach at home. That would have been my second choice. Only to get home and find there was none.

Now let me say, I'm a big fan of Chef Michael Smith, especially his Chef at Home show on Foodtv. The show is about cooking without any recipe and I'm always inspired. And, I'm lucky enough to be interviewing him tomorrow, so stay tuned for the interview. I am so excited! But I digress...sort of.

Earlier in the week I watched an episode where he was making trout and preserving the tradition of catching and cooking fish with his father, when he was a boy and passing that tradition on to his son. I love the sentiment (especially since I'm now a grandma and loving doing things with Boaz that I did with his mom when she was little).

Bear with me....just before a commercial break Chef Michael showed how to slow roast tomatoes (for a gorgeous looking salad) and in less time than it took to run the commercial, I had my tomatoes in the oven. He actually has the slow oven dried tomato recipe on the link from the show, but I did as the Chef always suggests, improvise...and made wonderful roasted tomatoes for many a dish....including tonight's dinner. Thought I'd never get around to it, didn't you?

In the end my Last Minute Pancetta, Olives and Oven Roasted Tomato Pasta was very tasty indeed. And still in time to make it to tomorrow's roundup. What about you?