Penne with Mushroom Steak Sauce

I can get creative with leftovers, but I must say this pasta dish could be my best recasting of leftover ingredients yet.  I had some extra mozzarella on hand, and anticipated correctly that the Ribeye with Mixed Mushroom Sauce I made would produce leftovers.  The result was this pasta dish with a hearty flavor like Bolognese sauce with the nice addition of a bit of quality steak and some tasty mushrooms.  You can make this into a two night affair, and first prepare the originally recipe from Food & Wine, then make this dish with the leftovers.  Or if you've already got some steak left you want to use for this, I've noted an alternative way to make the sauce. 

Ingredients

4 tbsp olive oil

1/2 lg onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 ozs mushroom, sliced

3 fresh tomatoes, diced into small pieces 

1/2 cup wine

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp fresh basic, chopped

1 sprig rosemary

1 tsp dried oregano

salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp ketchup (or tomato paste if you have it!)

1 tbsp beef broth if you have some on hand

appx. 1 cup leftover mixed mushroom sauce, or see note below for alternative method if you don't have mushroom sauce on hand. 

meat from 1 ribeye steak or other leftover steak, appx 1.5 cups, cut into small 1/2 inch dice

1 bone with surrounding meat/fat attached from ribeye or other bone-in steak

dash of red pepper flakes

1 cup diced fresh mozzarella

1 lb penne

Heat 2 tbsp olive in a medium pan.  Add garlic and onions, saute for 5 minutes on medium heat.  Add mushrooms, salt and pepper to taste, and cook for another 5 minutes until the mushrooms have begun releasing their liquid.  Stir in the red wine & vinegar.  Add the tomatoes, rosemary, basil, and oregano.  Simmer for about 10 minutes.  Add the steak and steak bone, mushroom sauce, ketchup and beef broth, simmer at least 30 minutes (the longer it simmers the more flavor you get, I did it for about 45).  Add the red pepper toward the end of the cooking.

Cook penne al dente (still a bit firm to the bite) according to instructions, so that it's ready at the end of the sauce simmering period.  Reserve 1/2 cup of cooking water.  Drain the penne, toss with sauce.  Stir in 2 tbsp remaining oil and cooking water over very low heat.  Add the mozzarella and stir.  Serve with grate romano or parmesan cheese at the table.

Mushroom Sauce Note:  If you are making this without some mushroom sauce onhand, you can approximate the effect of having the sauce ready by increasing the mushroom quantity to about 12 ozs, using a mix of regular button mushrooms and wild mushrooms of your choice.  I used shitaake and chaterelles.

Wine Match:  A meal like this calls for a hearty Italian red to be sure!  I served with a 2003 Solane Santi Valpolicella, made with an interesting technique called ripasso.  The wine tastes of blackberries with chocalate undertones.  6 months in our cellar, it was smoother than the first bottle we previously had.