Learn more. That said, I haven't always seen the point of cooking with wine, and particularly of cooking wine. Apparently, the general rule is never to cook with any wine that you wouldn't drink, so there's me told, because I used to treat wine merely as a descaler for those tasty burnt bits at the bottom of the pan. No more will I slosh wine I'd sooner thin my nail polish with into casseroles and stews.
Don't let their elegant fancy-restaurant flavors fool you. Pan sauces can spell survival for time-challenged cooks. They take about 17 minutes, start to finish, and that includes the time it takes to quickly sauté boneless beef, fish, pork or poultry. Made in the same pan, the sauce is dependent on the brown bits left behind, those caramelized drippings that the French dub the "fond."
"It creates a wonderful, velvety, thick sauce without any cream or anything else," she said. This is because the starch that pasta releases into the water when you are cooking helps to emulsify and thicken the sauce. To do this, De Laurentiis recommends reserving at least a cup of the hot pasta water before you drain your pasta. She also says to add a bit of the water to your sauce a time as you stir it into your cooked pasta.