I recently purchased Brian St. Pierre’s book The Wine Lover Cooks Italian: Pairing Great Recipes with the Perfect Glass of Wine. I read an interesting recipe in which the pasta is cooked in red wine instead of water, and decided to test it out. The recipe calls for cooking penne in wine, which ended up being about two bottles!! The result was a lovely, deep maroon pasta with a rich, almost overwhelming wine flavor. I melted Asiago cheese in it – very decadent. I would serve this as a first course for company but a whole bowl of it was almost too rich. There was surprisingly little wine sauce left over – maybe 1/2 a cup. I used it as a sauce on chicken the next day.

Inpspiration: The Wine Lover Cooks Italian and a large bottle (750 ml) of Vendage Merlot.