Just about any night around here can be pasta night, but I went to bed last night thinking of pasta, olives, and fresh tomatoes. I had been out earlier in the day picking more tomatoes and peppers and was thinking a fresh sauce was in order. We have plenty of jarred sauce downstairs – and plenty of fresh tomatoes that need using up.

I made a few pints of pepper relish yesterday and there’s a bush-load of tabasco peppers out there that I hope will make a few bottles of hot sauce this weekend.

The garden is slowing down, but it ain’t finished.

As I headed off to Wegman’s for my weekly grocery trek, olives stayed front and center in  my mind. I hit their Mediterranean Bar and picked up a pint of assorted pitted olives. They went into the skillet with chopped fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic, a bit of oregano, and lots of pepato cheese – a sheep’s milk cheese with peppercorns from Sicily.

I thought about chopping the olives but decided I wanted to taste different olives instead of having everything blended together. Either way would work – this is what I chose this time.

My original vision had wide noodles soaking up the sauce – I really do have a vivid imagination when it comes to this stuff – but when heading into the cupboard, I found a bag of Arcobaleno – rainbow – pasta shaped like a rather large orecchiette.

Vision was tweaked a bit.

Sausage was cooked off with some onion and garlic – and a goodly splash of red wine. And then fresh tomatoes were added. No peeling or seeding…

I cooked it down and then added the olives and cipollini onions.

Heated it all through, added the pasta that was slightly undercooked, and finished it off in the sauce.

It came out exactly as I hoped it would, albeit with a bit more heat than Nonna likes. She ate a goodly amount but wanted a piece of cheese cake to cool her mouth off.

We, on the other hand, went for it with both barrels. And… there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

Life is good.