Nothing simpler to make – and nothing tastier! – than a fresh tomato sauce. Just about any Italian restaurant will serve you pasta al pomodoro if you ask, though it might not be on the menu. Often my choice on a hot summer day, I advise visitors to Italy that you’ll always know a good restaurant by their tomato sauce.
No restaurant, though, can make a sauce quite as good as your own, using ripe tomatoes from your garden.
No garden, no tomatoes? Buy very good organic ones for the recipes below.
Pasta al Pomodoro
Ingredients (for sauce for 6 persons or more)
Extra-virgin (only!) olive oil
about 15 or so very ripe Roma tomatoes (should be soft to the touch and when cut open, fully red – no white filaments!)
2 or 3 cloves garlic
small white or yellow onion
salt q.b. (“quanto basta”)
generous bunch of fresh basil>rigatoni or penne pasta (1 lb for every 5 persons)
Wash the tomatoes and then put them in a pot of water and squeeze them under the water so that the seeds are eliminated.
Cover bottom of saucepan with olive oil and add tomatoes.
Add garlic cloves, onion (no need to chop!), fresh basil and salt q.b., then cook on low heat.
Simmer until water of the tomatoes evaporates.
Put tomato mixture into a food mill and puree. Adjust salt as needed.
Serve on pasta. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve.
You can also use this sauce to make the “famous” eggplant dish of Pino’s mamma, Signora Vincenza.
Note: This sauce is a winner even with just garlic, if you don’t have an onion.
….and here’s another way to serve up goodness with your your fresh tomato sauce
Pasta al Pomodoro con Zucchine Fritte (Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Fried Zucchini)
Make the above sauce and top off with fried zucchini. Best to use medium-sized or small zucchini and if using small ones, slice longitudinally after slicing a strip off two sides for better frying.
Put the zucchini in a bowl and cover with fine salt and let sit for about 30 minutes. Rinse well, then drain and spread out on dish towel, assuring that all slices dry before frying.
Add sunflower seed oil – or other seed oil – to pan and then some olive oil.
When oil sizzles, slide in zucchini (and avoid overlapping of slices for better frying).
Brown on both sides, then drain on paper (I save the brown paper bags our bread comes in for frying…..)
Top off the pasta with your fresh tomato sauce with fried zucchini. Add Parmesan. Buon appetito!
Click here for Signora Vincenza’s recipe for pasta topped with eggplant
Click here for another Signora Vincenza recipe
Click here for another favorite summertime tomato sauce recipe
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