Chapter I: The Basics, vi: Summer Sauce with Homemade Pasta

Last week, my husband and I decided to send off the summer by making our first tomato sauce - a beautiful summer sauce that we would serve over homemade pasta. We were very excited to make our first sauce and this one did not disappoint. It was relatively easy to make and tasted delicious. The most intriguing part of the recipe was making the oil infused with garlic, basil, and tomato skins. This was the key ingredient and it helped the sauce transform from basic fresh tomato concoction to delightful homemade sauce. If you missed our post about making homemade pasta, click here to check that out (it truly does get easier the more you do it!). This sauce would have been good no matter what, but it was extra yummy served over our homemade linguine. 

This recipe was inspired by Scott Conant's Scarpetta spaghetti sauce recipe that he demonstrated on No Reservations. 

The first step in making this sauce was boiling tomatoes. We picked up these fresh Roma tomatoes from our local food co-op (Random Harvest). We flash boiled (blanched them) and then quickly took them from the water and put them into a large bowl. 

Next, we removed the skins from the tomatoes and put them into a small saucepan. The skins will come off quite easily after the tomatoes have been blanched, they just sort of peel away on their own with gentle coaxing. Now we are going to make the special oil. To the saucepan, we then added about a half cup of oil, a handful of fresh basil leaves and whole garlic cloves. The photo is misleading because you'll see some chunks of cheese but those did not go into the sauce - we were snacking! Snacking is an important part of cooking, did you know?

 Cook the oil mixture on high heat until it's almost boiling and then simmer for about 15 - 20 minutes on low heat. 

 While the oil is cooking, you can mash your peeled tomatoes. We used a box grater but we heard that a potato ricer is recommended (we just didn't have one). They should still be a little chunky, not totally pureed. 

Once they grated/mashed, add them to the oil mixture and stir well with a wooden spoon until well-incorporated. 

And there you have it! A beautiful summer pasta sauce! Extremely simple to make and absolutely delicious. We added a side of hot Italian sausage to our meal and it was perfetto! 

This was a great first sauce to make because it was so simple and sort of got me over my fear of making a red sauce! 

I'm excited to try a hearty, meaty winter sauce but I think we'll be eating this sauce year round!