Recently, my friend Arthur Schwartz, an expert on southern Italian cooking, told me about an extremely simple tomato sauce made from just four ingredients: olive oil, garlic, concentrated tomato paste, and milk.

In a sauté pan, sauté a peeled and smashed garlic clove in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Remove the garlic just before it takes on any color. (Your nose should let you when.) Next, add two full tablespoons of imported Italian tomato paste. (The one that comes in a tube.) Stir for about two minutes or until the paste has dissolved into the oil. Finally, add a scant cup of milk, season with salt and pepper, and cook uncovered until the sauce has slightly thickened. That’s it. I knew I would eventually make this sauce.

Well last night, I remembered some veal stew with mushrooms that had been sitting in the fridge for a few days. (See my June 6th posting.) There wasn’t enough meat for two servings, so I thought I could stretch and even refashion the stew as a sauce for some fresh pappardelle.

The stew, however, even when we had it the first night, didn’t have a lot of sauce. And after several days in the fridge, there was even less. That’s when I thought of my friend’s tomato and milk sauce.

After preparing the sauce as described above, except for enriching it with just a touch of cream, I added the stew to the sauté pan and let it reheat partially covered for about 15 minutes. I then added about a half cup of frozen peas and cooked the sauce until the peas were warmed through.

While the stew, now a sauce, was still on the heat, with a spider strainer I transferred the cooked-a-minute-before-al-dente pappardelle to the pan, tossing the pasta to coat with the sauce. After less than a minute, I removed the pan from the heat. Over the pasta, I grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano, sprinkled some torn basil leaves, and gave it all a final toss.

Served accompanied by a Rosso Piceno from Italy’s Marche region, our revisited stew made a perfect Sunday night pasta.

In a comment to this post, please feel free to share any of your recipes for refashioning leftovers.