Impress Your Guests Spaghetti

I recently came across a Food & Wine recipe for $4 spaghetti that tastes as good as Scarpetta's $24 spaghetti.  Scarpetta is one of my favorite NYC restaurants, so I was intrigued to try this recipe.   I have never made my own sauce before and decided to give it a shot. And since Doctor J loves spaghetti, I figured it would most likely be a husband pleaser!

I didn't realize that the total time to make this recipe was 3 HOURS.  That being said, only 30 minutes was active cooking time so all you have to do is plan ahead. I, of course, did not do this and we ended up eating dinner at 10:00PM!

The recipe called for a large enamel cast iron or dutch oven.  I will admit, I had to google exactly what this was.  A dutch oven is a cast iron cooking pot that you can cook with on the stove and in the oven.  A Le Creuset is an example and thank goodness for my registry, or I would not own one of these!  They are a bit pricey, but I promise you will use it often and they last forever.

As many of my readers know, my goal is to help you make easy and delicious meals that are not too laborious and have a huge wow factor!  This recipe definitely fits the bill.  In the end it was a simple recipe to make and Doctor J said the taste was restaurant quality.

You can find the full recipe here.  Below are a few pictures of my process.

{Making the mushroom reduction}

   {Boiling garlic in olive oil}

   {Canned tomatoes in my Le Creuset}