Sunday Night Dinner: Tomato Sauce Using Fresh Tomatoes

Pasta with Tomato Sauce is my go-to dinner on days that I am feeling lazy, but I usually make it with canned tomatoes. It’s easier and finding tomato skin in my pasta really gets on my nerves.

There are those times, however, when you’ve just returned home from the other side of the world, are slightly jet-lagged, and buy way too much food on your first trip to the supermarket. That was me on Friday, and one of the things that I bought on a whim was a package of seven small hot-house grown and slightly under-ripe plum (aka Roma) tomatoes.

Plum tomatoes, unless really fresh and ripe, are not great as salad fare goes. They aren’t all that sweet and never really reach a state of melting in your mouth and being totally delicious. Consequently, I almost never buy them fresh. For cooked fare, however, plum tomatoes are perfect. They are give sauces body and are flavorful when stewed.

After my Friday shopping bonanza, I thought making sauce from scratch would be a good way to use up my tomatoes on something that could feed me for a few days.

I make a lot of tomato sauce. One large batch is endlessly combinable with all sorts of foods and can feed you in an un-repetitive manner for days.

Some things I like to add when eating tomato sauce with pasta:

*Chicken, Shrimp, or Clams
*Sauteed Zucchini
*Olives and/or Capers

Some non-pasta dishes in which I use tomato sauce:

*Chicken parmesan
*Baked fish fillet with tomato sauce (I do variations on this theme.)
*As sauce for homemade pizza
*As a base for tomato soup – I sometimes combine leftover sauce with vegetable stock and simmered vegetables

I also season my sauce differently at different times of the year. In the winter I favor richer herbs like rosemary and thyme, whereas in the summer I like fresher-tasting herbs like basil or parsley.

The Recipe

7 small plum tomatoes
3 cloves of garlic
½ a large yellow onion
½ a red pepper
White wine
Salt, pepper
Herbs to taste

*These are the proportions that I used but it is just as easy to make a larger batch if there are two of you hoping to eat for a few days. These proportions made about three hearty servings for me.

Peeling the Tomatoes

This always seems like it is going to be a major process but is actually relatively quick and easy. Just boil up some water (I used the same saucepan I was planning to use for the sauce to save some sink space). Once the water is hot, cut a shallow slit into the skin of each tomato and place it into the pot.





After a few seconds, the tomato skin will start to loosen. When that happens, use a slatted spoon to take the tomatoes out of the pot and set them in a bowl to cool.

Once they are cool enough to handle, the skin comes right off!








The Sauce


While I was waiting for my tomatoes to cool, I diced my onions, red pepper, and garlic. I cut them relatively small for this recipe so that they would cook faster.

Then I poured some olive oil into the pot (just enough to coat the bottom), set it to medium heat, waited until the oil was hot, then added the onions, followed soon after by the red pepper and garlic.

Once the onions and peppers had cooked down a little, I diced and added the tomatoes. (They can be chopped to any size, depending on how chunky you like your sauce. I was in the mood for something uniform and smooth so I made my pieces small.)

Once all the vegetables had been added I peppered the mixture again, then let it simmer for a while on low-medium heat. Once some of the liquid had cooked off I added some rosemary, covered the pot, then let the sauce cook for for about 30 minutes on low. This softened any of the vegetables that were not yet tender and deepened the flavor.

When I uncovered the sauce I added some wine. I generally add red wine to tomato sauce but I only had white, so I went with it. Then I added a touch of balsamic vinegar too just because I thought it would taste good (it did!).

When it was done I served the sauce with pasta and added some fresh mozzarella for general deliciousness reasons. The mozzarella melts into the sauce and becomes stringy and delicious.

I put the leftover sauce into a covered pyrex bowl in the fridge because I planned on using it the next day. If you aren't sure when you'll be using the sauce, you can always freeze it.

Bon Appetit!