I returned from my visit with you and Lola to a garden full of vine ripened tomatoes. While this might be a welcome bounty to most people, I must admit that sometimes a bowl of ripe tomatoes can bring back some painful memories for me. After all, I was not always the culinary goddess I am now, and some of my beginning attempts at cooking were, well, in a word, disasters!
Case in point - my first attempt to make homemade spaghetti sauce. This was actually a collaborative failure, as it took both my college roommate and me to create a sauce that had the texture of gummy oatmeal, the color of an over-ripe pumpkin and the taste of wallpaper paste.
Laura (the roommate) and I were sophomores, and enjoying our first month of living off campus in our own apartment. We invited a couple of guys from MIT over for dinner, and decided that spaghetti was about the only thing we could afford to make that would feed four people. How hard could spaghetti be? We had both watched our moms make it hundreds of times, so we were pretty sure we knew what we were doing. Oh, and it looked so easy - just put some tomatoes in a pot with some seasonings, and you're done, right? Ah, the cockiness of youth! We may have watched our moms make sauce hundreds of times, but evidently neither of us was really paying much attention.
We started out with the right idea, putting some canned tomatoes into a pot with some oregano and crushed red pepper. We heated it up, and waited for it to thicken into that rich, sweet tomato-ey sauce that clings passionately to each strand of pasta. We waited, and waited and waited. (With the impatience of youth, we probably waited about 20 minutes, if truth be told.) Well, the sauce wasn't thickening up. What to do? How did our moms thicken sauces? Oh, of course - FLOUR! We stirred in some flour, and were rewarded with a lumpy orange mixture that would make nice bricks once it cooled.
Luckily, there was an Italian restaurant right down the street that served take-out, so as Laura greeted the boys at the front door, I ran out the back, picked up four orders of spaghetti to go, and ran back to the apartment. After barricading the kitchen door, Laura and I put all of the spaghetti into a big bowl and sliced up some bread. We presented this dinner to our dates, who declared that it was the best spaghetti they had ever had.
But I digress. Now I'm excited by a harvest of ripe red tomatoes and am not afraid to slowly coax them into a sauce that I can be proud of. Not only do I make the sauce from scratch, but I make it with ingredients that I've picked right out of my own back yard - roma tomatoes, green peppers, and fragrant green basil.
This is a pretty rustic sauce, with big chunks of sweet tomatoes and tangy green peppers. The amount of seasoning you use will definitely vary depending on the ripeness and sweetness of the tomatoes. It makes a quick weeknight supper, as once you assemble the sauce, it cooks and thickens in about the time it takes to cook up a pot of pasta. Add a salad and a crusty loaf of french bread, and you're all set.
summer harvest pasta sauce
6 to 8 large, well-ripened roma tomatoes
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 of a large red onion, roughly diced
1 large green pepper, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch strips
2 cloves garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. sugar (or to taste - the amount you use will vary with the ripeness and sweetness of the tomatoes)
2 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
Fresh basil for garnish
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Remove pot from heat and place tomatoes in the water to loosen the skins.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Lightly saute the onion, green pepper and garlic in the oil until the vegetables just begin to soften. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. While the vegetables are sauteing, peel and coarsely chop the tomatoes.
4. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar and Italian seasoning to the skillet. Reduce heat to medium or medium low, and simmer slowly until sauce thickens, about 15 to 20 minutes. (now is a good time to cook your pasta)
5. Serve sauce over pasta of your choice - I like farfalle, but you can use linguine or spaghetti just as well. Garnish with fresh basil leaves and grated Parmesan cheese.
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