Spaghetti with Home-made Tomato Sauce

Its been a while but things have been busy, so let’s leave it at that! Its gonna get even busier when I take off to India in a week. I have plans of documenting, taking pictures and blogging about all the delicious food I am going to eat there and I really hope I remember to do all that and not get carried away by just eating. We all know that can happen right?
But the good news is that I have atleast 3-4 more good posts waiting and you will see them all in the coming week.

You know I am a big proponent of cooking from scratch. It IS tedious, time consuming and all that but believe me once you go down that path you will never go to store-bought or ready made pastes, sauces, whatever else that maybe. Use the freshest of ingredients that you can get your hands on, make whatever you can from scratch with love and I swear there will not be a more delicious food that you will ever make. Pasta sauces are one my recent obsessions to cooking from scratch. The tomatoes and the onion used in this sauce are farm fresh from my CSA box from FullCircle Farms.

Start by scoring and X at the bottom of each tomatoes, dunk the tomatoes in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Remove them from the boiling water and put them in ice cold water. Peel off the skin, remove seeds – just keep the nice fleshy part, it makes the sauce thick and gives it a great color too. Now keep the rest of the ingredients for the sauce ready – crush the garlic, dice onions and drain the oil off the sun-dried tomatoes.

Heat some olive oil and throw in the garlic and onions into it. Saute till the onions become translucent and add the chilli flakes, dried basil and oregano to it. Give it a good mix and then add the sun-dried tomatoes. Saute for a little while more, switch off the heat and keep aside to cool a little. Add this mix and the blanched tomatoes to your food processor and process to a smooth puree. Put this back to the pot and bring to a boil, add salt and crushed black pepper to it. Now you can add this to your favorite pasta or store it in the refrigerator for a week or so.

Sprinkle a little grated parmesan on the warm pasta just before serving and enjoy with your favorite glass of wine.


Spaghetti with Home-made Tomato Sauce – The Recipe

Tomatoes – 3-4

Olive Oil – 1 tbsp
Yellow Onion – 1, chopped
Garlic – 3-4 cloves, crushed
Sun-dried tomatoes – 3 tbsp
Red Chilli flakes – 1 tbsp
Dried Basil – 2 tsp
Dried Oregano – 2 tsp
salt
crushed black pepper
Spaghetti – 1 box
Parmesan Cheese, grated – 2 tbsp

Method

Blanch the tomatoes (

Start by scoring and X at the bottom of each tomatoes, dunk the tomatoes in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Remove them from the boiling water and put them in ice cold water). Peel off the skin

 

remove seeds – just keep the nice fleshy part, it makes the sauce thick and gives it a great color too. Heat the olive oil in a pan, add the onion and garlic to it. Once the onion turns translucent, add the red chilli flakes, dried basil and oregano (Note: If you have fresh herbs, use them as they are way more flavorful than the dried ones). Mix well and add the sun dried tomatoes too. Season with salt and crushed black pepper. Switch off the heat. Let it cool down a bit. Add this mix and the tomatoes to a food processor and grind to a smooth puree. Pour it back into the pan and heat it up a little. Cook the pasta to al dente, mix in the sauce. Grate some parmesan on top of the plated pasta just before serving.