Award Winning Pasta Sauce Recipe!

Hey ya'll! Today I'm having a rockin' karma day [didn't have to wait for either of my metro trains, I'm having one of those "effortlessly cute" days that come along so infrequently that I tend to forget about them between occurrences, and my morning meeting put me in a great mood] so it's only fitting that I get to share more good news with you...

My Smoked Tomato Pasta Sauce with Portabella & Fennel recipe was selected out of a few hundred entries as a runner-up in the Buitoni Pasta Sauce Recipe Contest! The challenge was to create a sauce that paired with one of Buitoni's new riserva pastas, and I chose to create a sauce that could stand up to their super rich, slightly spicy braised beef and sausage ravioli.

I wanted to impart a wood-grilled flavor onto the ravioli, so I prepped some awesome vegetables for smoking, and threw them on my trusty Weber kettle with some hickory chips. Then I used the smoked veggies with bacon, some strong herbs (fennel, tarragon), and a salty, mild cheese that looks beautiful and added some creamy depth (ricotta salata--it's bright white!) to make a silky, smoky sauce. Voila!

This was my first "cooking contest" entry, so I'm very excited that the people at Foodbuzz.com liked it enough to select it as a runner up. And I get a cool gift pack as a prize, so I'll dish on that once it arrives.