Reviving leftover pasta sauce

Okay, so it's Saturday night, and I don't usually cook, or cook big meals for dinner.  Today, I was kind of planning to make roast pork loin, but after having a big bowl of Pho for lunch, I didn't want to cook anything too heavy.  Plus, after lunch, shopping, and diddling around on my laptop, it was already 8pm by the time I got around to thinking about dinner.  So, I put my lovely pork loin in the freezer for another day, and took a look at what else we could have for dinner.

What I found: tomato meat sauce I made earlier in the week, a full bunch of asparagus that I bought last weekend, a block of cheddar cheese, and whole wheat Rigatoni pasta.  So, in light of my revived inspiration for cooking and blogging about cooking, I decided to put a little effort into reviving this pasta sauce to make a balanced and comfortable meal for me and my husband.

Boiled the pasta for about 15 min, and then added the asparagus for the remaining 2 minutes.  I like to boil whole wheat pasta a little longer than package instructions, so that it becomes as tender as regular pasta (rather than grainy and tough).

After draining the pasta and asparagus, I separated the two, and ran cool water over the pasta to stop the cooking.  I then wiped dry my saucepan, and added a drizzle of olive oil.  On medium heat, I added some diced garlic (1 clove), and then the cooked asparagus.  Seasoned with coarse salt and pepper, and then sauteed it for a minute or two.

After placing the asparagus on a plate, I added the pasta sauce to the pot.  I thought it looked a bit, shall I say, tired.  So, I tried to revive it by adding a bit of water and corn starch to make it more thick and saucy.  Note: if you're using corn starch to thicken sauce, always mix it with a bit of water first, so that it's loose and blended.  If you add it straight to the sauce, you could have little lumps of corn starch in your sauce, and it won't thicken as nicely.

See, doesn't it look promising?



Et, voila!

Leftover pasta sauce revived!