and Summer
to Spicy Foods
Pasta Sauce
Beaumont's
Barbecued Stout Pasta Sauce
I love using the barbecue and will fire it up, even in winter, at the slightest provocation. I also enjoy a deep, smoky flavour in my pastas and so I came up with the following recipe for a rich and tasty pasta sauce. If you want to go the full nine yards, try substituting a rauchbier (smoked beer) like Rogue Smoke or Zip City Rauchbier in the place of the stout.
Beer Mate
I have always wondered how beer and pizza or beer and spaghetti came to be such essential culinary combinations, since tomato is one of the toughest flavours to match with beer! In the case of this dish, however, the job is made much easier by the strength of the barbecue's smoke.This is one case where I would recommend dining with the beer you used in the dish, namely a dry, smoky stout. The burnt qualities of the stout will balance well with the smokiness of the dish while its dryness will easily stand up to the mild spiciness. If you elect to cook the rauchbier variation, I would still recommend serving the stout as the combination of the dish and the rauchbier may just prove to be too smoky to handle.
Barbecued Stout Pasta Sauce
- 6 medium tomatoes 6
- 1 green pepper 1
- 1 sweet red pepper 1
- 1 hot banana pepper (optional) 1
- 2 medium onions 2
- 2 Italian or Macedonian sausages (roughly 1 lb/500 g) 2
- 1 cup dry stout (or optional rauchbier) 250 mL
- 1 5½ oz. can tomato paste 156 mL
- 1 large clove garlic 1
- 1 tbsp dried oregano 15 mL
- ½ tsbp dried basil 7 mL
- ½ tsbp parsley 7 mL
- salt & pepper to taste
Lengthwise halve the tomatoes, peppers and onions and barbecue them, along with the sausages, on a medium flame until the vegetable skins are slightly charred and the sausages cooked. (The sausages may be parboiled in advance of barbecuing if time is a consideration.) Remove the vegetables and sausages from the grill and allow them to cool until they can be comfortably handled.
Peel, core and crush the tomatoes in a medium-sized pot and stir in the tomato paste and stout until you have a deep reddish-brown sauce. Mince the garlic and add it to the sauce along with the seasonings. Stir well. After peeling the onions and the peppers, chop them and the sausages into medium-sized pieces (except the optional hot pepper, which should be finely diced) and add them to the pot. Simmer the sauce for at least 30 minutes and adjust the seasonings to taste. Serve over al dente linguini or other pasta. Feeds 4 - 6.
A Taste for Beer © Stephen Beaumont, 1995
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