This evening’s food was a bit by way of an experiment. We’d bought some ready-prepared ravioli (mushroom and ricotta, as you ask) and I decided we would have it with a tomato sauce, but ended up experimenting. So what I ended up with was …

Tomato, Olive and Port Sauce

I used …
medium Red Onion, finely chopped
3 clove Garlic, finely chopped
a few small Cherry Tomatoes, halved
small can Chopped Tomatoes (or more chopped fresh tomatoes)
2 tablespoons Tomato Paste
12 Black Olives, chopped
half wineglass of Port

Roughly what I did …
Sauté the onion and garlic in some (olive) oil until the onion is just beginning to brown.
Now throw in the fresh tomatoes and olives and sauté for another couple of minutes.
Add a couple of egg-cups of port and cook for a further couple of minutes.
Now add the tinned tomatoes if you’re using them, if not just let the fresh tomatoes cook down.
Season with a small pinch of salt and a generous amount of black pepper.
Let the whole lot cook for a few minutes to thicken and reduce; add more port if it gets too jam-like.
Towards the end add another couple of egg-cups of port and the tomato paste; the result should be nether jam-like nor too liquid but somewhere in between.

I ended up with a deep red, very robust, sauce which was quite tasty but rather too robust for the ravioli, but stood up well to a hearty Sicilian red wine. It would go well with braised rabbit, or pheasant, or maybe lamb. And it would work well with blackberries in place of port, when it would be especially good with rabbit (rabbit and blackberries is a favourite here!).

Experiments don’t always work, or at least not the way one thinks they might. But nonetheless this was an experiment worth doing, and worth eating!