Pan-fried snapper and pasta with tomato sauce in Ashland

Last week we drove to Oregon for my mom's birthday. On the way up, we stopped in Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespear Festival, where we saw All's Well That Ends Well. The play was massively rewritten (it's a "problem play") and set in WWII France; it was one of the best Shakespeare productions we've seen in a while. We stayed in the Columbia Hotel, because we could get a room with a kitchen. The bathrooms, on the other hand, are down the hall.

B, who's in the English department here, was understandably excited about Shakespeare:


The meal was simple, except that the kitchen had only two pots and neither strainer nor cutting board. Begin boiling water for pasta in the sauce pot. In the fry pan, heat plenty of olive oil and begin sautéing (wait a little between ingredients): 1 leek, washed and chopped; plenty of garlic, diced; 1 sweet bell pepper, cut into slices; some salt. Then add 1/2 lp penne to the pasta water, and pour in a can of tomatoes (drained as well as you can) into the sauce.

Boil everything 6 minutes. Then drain the pasta as well as you can, keeping it in its pot, and transfer the sauce, stirring it into the pasta. Return to the heat on low, cover, and let steam while you make the fish. There is no need to clean the fry pan. Heat more oil with garlic, and fry fillets of snapper a few minutes to a side. Be sure to salt the snapper as it cooks and sprinkle with lemon juice at the end. Serve with the pasta (the sauce should run under the fish for the perfect pairing); pairs well with romano cheese and a dry white wine.

We did not get pictures of the sauce. Here's B making salad, and pictures the fish and the table: