Pasta Pomodoro

Yes, I bought my first running magazine for the recipes.  This amazing—and easy—Pomodoro (tomato) sauce is the base for all of Chef Joe Bastianich's pasta dishes which I will also be posting.  Yet the sauce with simply the pasta is marvelous. 

Chicken Scarpariello

Okay, here it is: our favorite meal.  We learned to make this when Kate was 2 months old, so as of today we have been making and loving this for 25 years.  Chicken Scarpariello was introduced to us by our dear, darling, beloved friends, Jim and Cathy DePiante.  When they were newlyweds they worked in an Italian restaurant somewhere in New Jersey; Jim learned to make this while cooking in the restaurant kitchen.  It is now our go-to special-occasion meal, birthday meal, welcome-home meal, and "Let's have something special tonight" meal.  

When Kate was living in Europe for a semester and the DePiantes were living in Rome at the same time, she took the train to Rome to see them for a long weekend.  After a full and exhausting day of sight-seeing and black-market purse shopping with Anthony, she walked into their house to the familiar home-smell of Chicken Scarpariello cooking and Kate knew she was among family.

As with most of my recipes, I haven't made a "single," but I've doubled this for years.