Ambrosiac musings of a food maniac

Last January Keren and myself celebrated my birthday at the 'Salon' restuarant in Tel Aviv, one of the most applauded restuarants in Israel. Lots has been written about Mr. Shani and his restaurant and by greater writers than yours truly, so I will leave the superlatives to them.

I first made this sauce when I had some very ripe grape tomatoes (a plum-shaped variant of cherry tomato) left over. I sliced a few of them, threw in the wok with some garlic, chili peppers and rosemary and then found out I was out of red wine, so I used some balsamic vinegar instead. The sauce was surprisingly delicious and I earned a new recipe.

You can use regular tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes, but try to pick the smallest, ripest tomatoes you can find. If using regular tomatoes, cut each tomato to 4 or 8 pieces, according to their size.

This marinade makes for an especially tender and delicious dish. The chicken thighs are also suitable for cooking as whole steaks on a BBQ.

The easiest way to make this marinade is to throw all solid ingredients with a little olive oil into a food processor and run it for a few minutes, until everything's chopped. This way, you don't even have to peel the garlic cloves - the BBQ fire will burn them anyway.

The name translates to "Pappardelle with cream of sweet bell peppers". I hope I got it right - anyone from Italy care to comment?