Italian Sauces - Pink Sauce with Arugula

Amy Riolo: Hi, I am Amy Riolo and we are making italian Pink Sauce with Arugula and as you recall we just made an italian recipe of basic Tomato Sauce. The basic tomato sauce is the base for our pink sauce. So it's very easy. We are just going to add into a different saucepan. We have our saucepan over medium heat, as we want it thicken down for a little bit. So we will add the full recipe in there which is about for 4-6 people and this is a nice sauce that you can make. If you want to do something a little bit special, you want to have pasta. This traditionally served with Penne pasta and this is enough for about 4-6 people.

So we are just going to stir that up and then we are going to add in one bunch of fresh Arugula which has been roughly chopped. This is not baby Arugula, this is just a regular Arugula. Arugula is sometimes also goes by the name of rocket and it's a nice peppery green that they use all the time in Italy with sauces and with meat especially and also as the salad. It gives it a nice very fresh flavor that really complement this sauce well but you could also put spinach in here if you couldn't find the Arugula or whatever you like and if you are going to use baby Arugula that's fine too. You wouldn't need to chop it at all and it would cook even more quickly. You can see how this is just wilting right down and melting into the sauce.

This is a delicious sauce that you would find in an Italian Presidia and the family style restaurants that they have all over Italy and it something that your family is really going to love to. So this is a great reason too when you make the basic tomato sauce to make a double batch because you can serve it one time plain and you can serve it another time this way and now you can see our arugula is nice and wilted and this is just a level that we wanted. We don't want it to be completely melting into the sauce but we want it to be nice and wilted so that you can still distinguish it from the sauce but yet it's held together by the sauce at the same time and that it doesn't have a raw taste. It only takes about two minutes.

Then we will going to add a little bit more black pepper into our sauce. We already have some in the original sauce but we are just adding a little bit more. We are also going to add another pinch of salt and just stir that in and here we have a half a cup of heavy cream. We are going to add that and that's what makes our red sauce pink is the addition of heavy cream. It's so simple and you won't believe the difference in flavor. It makes completely different flavor and very very delicious sauce.

Now you could also make this with a baked pasta recipe if you like, Rigatoni or Penne. What you would do is just make the Penne or the Rigatoni a little bit more al dente or toss than you normally would. Don't cook it quite as long and then mix it in with this sauce and then put it into a baking dish. Top it with a little bit of Parmesano Reggiano Cheese, Parmesan cheese and bake it at 350 for about 20 minutes. It makes a nice very nice baked dish or a buffet dish, but I like to serve it like this, with regular Penne pasta. It tastes absolutely delicious and if ever serving guests, you can see this is a very quick and impressive dish to serve. In Italy, pasta is generally served as a first course. So a small amount of pasta would be served like this and then for your second course, you could have a simple beef wheel or chicken dish or also seafood and then follow that up with the salad and you have a great quick meal. So this is what our pink sauce looks like when it's completely done and that's it. We don't need to cook it any longer than that. Just enough to incorporate all of our ingredients.

Coming up next, we will show you how to make a creamy italian Alfredo Sauce.