Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Presto Pasta Night - Pasta and Tomato Sauce

I have been bad again and missed out on weeks and weeks worth of Presto Pasta Nights! Things are so busy right now that we have been eating the most boring meals, almost nothing worth telling you about.

Except this!

One day earlier this week I came home early from work as we were having some work done on the house. I played around in the kitchen for a while and decided to make some pasta sauce for later in the week. I stayed very simple with it, and in less than an hour I had the most delicious sauce I've made in a while. It was so good that I didn't want to wait to have some. Since I was on my own for dinner that night but the kitchen was getting too warm for any more cooking I skipped the pasta, toasted a bagel and topped it with some tomato sauce. Delicious! It wasn't until the last bite I thought to take a picture. And I call myself a blogger! I packed up the rest of the sauce before I ate it all, and we finished it off for dinner tonight.



Tomato Sauce

3 tb olive oil
5 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 small red onion, chopped
28 oz can good quality canned tomatos, skinned if possible
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
small handful fresh basil, or 1/2 to 1 tsp dried

Heat a medium sized pot over medium high heat and add the oil. Add the onion and cook, stirring often for 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and reduce the heat to medium. Cook until the onion and garlic have softened and is very lightly brown. Add the tomatos and their juices, and the salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 40 minutes. Chop or shred the fresh basil and add to the sauce 1-2 minutes before removing from heat.

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I used basil from my garden for this sauce! I'll be posting some new garden pictures soon, it's looking amazing.

5 comments:

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

I marvel every summer at the incredible feeling I get from being able to walk around the backyard and come back inside with a huge basket of herbs - basil is always in the bunch. I have so many volunteer plants now it's crazy.
Simple sauce is wonderful.

Deborah said...

I was just thinking that I needed to find a good tomato sauce recipe because my tomatoes are starting to ripen. My basil plant looks great as well!!

Ruth Daniels said...

Sara, I do envy you your garden - especially the basil!

The tomato sauce sounds delicious and I'm glad you finally were able to join in Presto Pasta Night fun.

Sara said...

Tanna - I am enjoying the garden more than I thought I would. I can't wait until I can start pulling some stuff up.

Deborah - you must have good luck with tomatos - ours are still little green things smaller than my thumb.

Ruth - I'm glad to be back at PPN, I'm going to try harder not to miss so many again.

Lis said...

Holy crap that looks excellent, Sara! I'm all about the good tomato sauces. Mmm mmmm!

I can't wait to see pictures of your garden! I'd take pictures of mine but it's so over grown with giant zucchini, cucumber and tomato plants that you can't really distinguish much of anything. heee!

xoxo