Archive for the ‘Pasta’ Category

Home Made Pasta Sauce

Friday, March 12th, 2010

End Result

So hanging outside is an awful lot of tomatoes. Coupled with the fruit bowl full of half ripe tomatoes, I have a LOT of tomatoes. And what better way  to use them up than to make a red and green tomato pasta sauce?

No better way is the answer to that.

I slit the bottoms of the ripe tomatoes and blanched them for peeling.

Blanching tomatoes for peeling

For the record, green tomatoes (they were in the second, unphotographed batch), they don’t peel easily. Because I don’t have a decent sieve and I am a martyr (no seriously, can you hear the little violins?) I elected to peel them with a potato peeler. Don’t mock me, it worked.

I then smooshed (technical term) the ripe tomatoes in my hands and chopped the green and yellow tomatoes up with a knife. First time in a while, but I didn’t cut myself once. I did manage to accidentally throw a tomato at the smallest child though, so that probably filled my accident quota for the morning. (I later managed to cut my finger on the soaker hose and trip over my own feet, so it obviously wasn’t my accident quota for the day.)

I threw everything into the pot, along with some sugar to counteract the green tomatoes, some salt, because everything is better with salt and some white wine vinegar. Because I like white wine vinegar and tomatoes.

Cooking Process

I left it to simmer and pulled tomato skins out of Amy’s hair. I also washed some dishes, before the pile fell over and attacked me.

It simmered for about oh, an hour, before I checked the seasoning, added more salt and sugar to taste and left it alone again to reduce and thicken a bit.

Once the green tomatoes were soft, I blitzed the whole batch with my stick blender (I inherited an actual Swiss Bamix, it’s fantastic. Shitty way to get kitchen gadgets though).

At this point I added 8-10 cloves of garlic, and 2 finely diced onions and wandered away to let it cook some more, before coming back and attacking it with the Bamix again.

I picked out the one last green tomato that wouldn’t puree, checked the seasoning again, added some brown sugar and then bottled it.

We had some for dinner tonight, on gluten free pasta. My advice for the day, don’t put GF pasta in cold water to start cooking. It won’t be pretty. And no, that muck up wasn’t me. For once.

pasta sauce 033

Ingredients:
A couple of kilos of red and green tomatoes
salt and sugar to taste (you will need to add sugar to fix the acidity levels)
white wine vinegar
2 finely diced onions
10 cloves of garlic

Blanche and peel the tomatoes, cutting out any black spots that the slugs/bugs/flies might have left.

Squash them in the pot, making sure you don’t lose any juices. Squirting yourself in the eyes is also bad. Don’t do that.

Chop the green tomatoes and add the the rest, along with a little bit of vinegar, salt and sugar to taste.

Leave to simmer for an hour or so before blending. Check seasoning and cook some more. Blend again.

Add onion and garlic and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes, before (you guessed it!) blending again.

Bottle while warm into warm sterilised jars with the pop top lids. Screw the lids on tight and leave to cool, thus letting them create their own vacuum seal.

Easy Tomato Pasta

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Easy Tomato Pasta

Grab yourself a can of diced tomatoes (400g [14oz]). Place the tomatoes into a blender (I have a bullet blender that I adore) with a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, some cracked black pepper and a tablespoon of good quality vinegar. (I used white balsamic)

Blend until completely smooth.

Cook yourself enough spaghetti to feed about 4 people (you know I throw my food together, rather than measuring anything, don’t you?) and drain. Throw the spaghetti back into the (still) hot (now) dry pot, and stir through the tomato mix.

Serve with fresh chopped basil and maybe some grated parmesan.

Mmmm

****

It is good pasta. Trust me. I also added about half a clove of garlic to the mix when I blended it. Roasted capsicum, fresh herbs, chillies, or onions would also go nicely with it. OR! Now that I have thought about it some more, anchovies and prawns. Mmmmmm.

Also, can someone tell me how Amy can eat 2 HUGE bowls of bright green spinach soup last night and tell me she wanted ‘more! YUM!’, and yet all she can tell me with this pasta is ‘YUK!’? She doesn’t even mean the yuk because she is finishing up her bowl of it right now.

Toddlers!

Spaghetti with Creamy Coriander Sauce

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Coriander is commonly called Cilantro in the US and Canada.

500g (1 lb) of spaghetti
300g of silken tofu (10 oz)
1 bunch of coriander, roots scrubbed and trimmed (ues the whole bunch, roots and stems as well)
1/2 cup of grated Parmesan
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 punnet of grape tomatoes, quartered

Cook spaghetti in a large saucepan of boiling salted water according to packet directions. Drain and return to pan.

Meanwhile, place tofu, coriander, Parmesan, garlic and oil in a food processor and process until smooth. Season to taste.

Add two-thirds of the coriander sauce and the grape tomatoes to the spaghetti and toss well over low heat until warmed through.

Serve spaghetti with dollops of the remaining sauce.

You could also use basil or mint instead of coriander here. OR you could leave out the spaghetti and use the coriander/basil/mint sauce as a low fat dressing for salads.