Roasted Tomato Pasta Sauce

Spring has sprung here in the suburbs. Everything is turning green, even my car thanks to all the pollen. And, thanks to global warming, or something, it's 90 degrees right now. On the plus side I wont have to roam the house with my bread dough looking for the very warmest place I can find so that it will rise in a reasonable amount of time the way I was all winter. But, it has also kicked off a craving for some luscious tomatoes to make into fresh pasta sauce, and we cant quite get those yet. I must have made Nigella's spaghettini al sugo crudo once a week last summer, and I am sure I will be making it and posting it here soon, but until that day comes, we will just have to make do with this sauce adapted from Martha Stewart (I was going to link you to the original recipe, but I cannot find it on her website for some reason, o Martha what am I going to do with you). Roasting the tomatoes first bumps up the essential tomatoeyness, for lack of a better word, and gives the sauce a great flavor, while the fresh basil and mozzarella brighten it up some. O and I hope you all had lovely Easters and/or Passovers, I know I did.

Start with your tomatoes, ideally you want roughly 2 cups, I had less. We had these heirloom cherry tomatoes in the fridge, so that is what I used. Toss with a splash of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Pop in a 375 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes, tossing once or twice so they cook evenly. You want them to sort of collapse in on themselves, and it doesn't hurt if the skin pops.

Once the tomatoes are roasted, you can carry on making the sauce, or you could do this part ahead of time and just let them hang out in your fridge for a day or two until you are ready.

Now for the sauce. Pour a bit of olive oil into a skillet, enough to cover the bottom. Martha would have you do 1/4 cup, but I didn't do that much. Smash 3 cloves of garlic and saute them in the oil. Don't worry, you don't have to eat those giant cloves (unless you want to), you just want them to infuse some lovely garlic flavor into the sauce.

Once you can smell the garlic, add the tomatoes, I cut these in half, but made sure to get as many of the guts that squirted out into the pan as I could.

I wanted a slightly saucier sauce, so I added a small can of tomato sauce. But, you could also add a can of diced tomatoes if you wanted a chunkier sauce, or you could start out with more roasted tomatoes to begin with. At this point i also added a handful of basil that I cut into strips using my handy dandy kitchen scissors (I love kitchen scissors, when I use them it generally means I don't have to wash a cutting board). Let the sauce simmer until the pasta is ready.

Meanwhile, you should be boiling some pasta. The point of the pasta is twofold, obviously as a vehicle for the lovely pasta sauce, but also for the starchy water. Actual chefs put pasta water in their sauces, and I do too. Actually most of the time I forget, but this time I remembered, well mostly because I had the heat on a bit too high and the sauce was bubbling down more than I wanted so I tossed in a ladleful or two of pasta water.

Once the pasta is done, drain it and return it to the pot. Add the sauce and an entire ball of fresh mozzarella, cut into cubes. Toss it all together, put the lid back on the pot and let it sit for a few minutes so the cheese can melt.

After the cheese is nice and melty, it is ready to eat.

Roasted Tomato Pasta Sauce

about 2 cups cherry tomatoes

olive oil

salt and pepper

3 cloves garlic, smashed

8 oz. can tomato sauce

about 10 leaves of fresh basil

1 ball fresh mozzarella, cubed

Toss the tomatoes in enough olive oil to lightly coat, sprinkle with salt and pepper (if using cherry tomatoes leave them whole, I would cut romas in half and anything bigger than that into quarters). Spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Roast in a 375 oven until they collapse in on themselves, about 15 minutes for the cherry tomatoes.

Coat the bottom of a skillet with olive oil and saute the garlic in it over medium heat until fragrant. Roughly chop the roasted tomatoes, then add them to the skillet. Add the tomato sauce, and the chopped basil.

Meanwhile, cook whichever pasta you love the most, adding about a cup of pasta water to the sauce, as needed. Once the pasta is done, drain it and return it to the pot. Toss with sauce and mozzarella, letting it sit until the cheese melts.

Stuffed Polenta

I saw this recipe online and had to try it right away, glorified pasta sauce, polenta and cheese? Sign me up. I swear this is easy, I know I say that about everything on this blog, but I really mean it. If you are like me and don't do much with your days, you can start the sauce whenever and let it cook for as long as you want (I am of the school that the longer things cook the better, except for of course some things, like fried eggs where the whole point is the runny yolk). For example, I started this sauce around 1:30 for dinner at 7, besides making it taste really good, and making the house smell good, it makes you either seem impressive or like you have way too much time on your hands when you mention that it has been cooking literally all day when you serve it. Also, I followed the recipe (well mostly, I can't help myself from tweaking a few things) and I ended up with a ton of sauce compared to the polenta (later I realized the recipe says you will, but still....) I ended up freezing about enough sauce to go on a box worth of pasta, which is going to be delicious at some point in the future.

Start with butter. Most good things start with butter. It's just a fact of life. And according to my dad when someone comments on how good something is, there is nearly always butter in it.

Add an onion to the butter.

Then sausages, I used mild but you can use spicy if you like. O and you will have to take them out of the casings, which can be mildly unpleasant, and cold, just warning you.

Once the sausage is browned and broken up, add the mushrooms. The recipe tells you to dice them, I sliced them. I am wild and crazy like that though.

Then play with your eggplant. I find the texture of raw eggplant very odd...

Or be an adult and just cut it up. Sidebar: Do you salt your eggplant and squish out the water before you use it? I researched this very important topic and I think it doesn't really matter unless you are using lots of oil which I am not.

Add the eggplant to the sausage mixture. This is what I call building layers of flavors when I want to sound fancy.

Moving on from the eggplant, toss in everything else, the tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, salt, pepper, oregano, garlic (I grated it in with my microplane) and whatever else you think it needs. Simmer for at least an hour, tasting every once in awhile to adjust the seasonings.

About half an hour before you want to put it all together, make the polenta. I added 2 bullion cubes to the water I used when making the polenta because that is what Nigella calls for in her polenta recipe and she is really cool so I did it too (I know, I know, would I jump off a cliff lemming style if Nigella did it? Probably). Spread half the polenta in an oven proof dish.

Cover the polenta with a decent layer of the sauce. Then dollop ricotta cheese over the sauce, I think I used more than the recipe called for, but I cant be sure because I didn't measure.

Add the rest of the polenta on top, smooshing it out as best you can (kudos to you if you can get it to cover the bottom layer, I couldn't for love nor money). Top with a bit more sauce.

Add the finishing touch, mozzarella cheese.

Bake until hot and bubbly. (o and in case you missed it earlier, the recipe can be found here)