Poor Man's Fra Diavolo

This last week, while trying to unfreeze our hot water pipes, I was rummaging through the kitchen for dinner. We didn't have much food in the house, but between the pantry and freezers, we had the makings for one of my favorite dishes - Fra Diavolo. Typically it's made with shrimp, but I've also made it with chicken. Since I didn't have shrimp or chicken on hand, I used tilapia, which we had several fillets frozen.

1 lb shrimp (or chicken or fish, cubed)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dried crushed red pepper

3 T olive oil

1 medium onion, sliced

1 can diced tomatoes

1 cup white wine

3 cloves garlic

1/4 tsp dried oregano

3 T fresh Italian parsley, chopped

3 T fresh basil leaves, chopped

Toss meat in a bowl with salt and red pepper. Heat oil in large skillet over med-high heat. Saute meat until just cooked through, set aside. Saute onion until translucent. Add tomato (with juices), wine, garlic, and oregano. Simmer until sauce thickens slightly, about 10 min. Return meat to pan, cook about another minute. Stir in parsley and basil. Serve over pasta.

I like this recipe since it's not a cream-based sauce. I used canned tomatoes and dried basil from our garden, in the summer I'll also use some fresh tomatoes for the texture and flavor. Homegrown food tastes so much better. I also added a package of frozen chopped spinach to increase the veggies. I also tossed the whole wheat pasta in the sauce pan at the end.

Everything simmering together:

Pasta tossed in:

Man, I love this dish. And this recipe is so good, I hardly ever order this out any more because I can make it better at home!

We keep track of our garden on our house blog, but for those that don't read it, here's a picture of our garden last summer. We have 5 raised beds and planted tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, herbs, and wildflowers, among other things. John started canning and we dried herbs, so we're still eating out of the garden in January. We have even bigger plans for the 2011 garden!