August 15, 2007
Now We're Cookin'
This post is brought to you by Too Many Tomatoes (and My Bad Hair).
I'm a gold medalist in two-ingredient cooking (think milk + cereal or, um, milk + chocolate sauce). These days it has less to do with IBS-induced food terror (it's been much better lately, thank you; I think portion control is the secret) than it has to do with speed and the three dozen things I'd rather be doing at any given moment besides chopping, whisking, or basting. I return home from work ravenous 90 percent of the time (the other 10 percent I'm merely hungry (like a wolf)) so I rarely have the patience stamina to cook anything involving a gentle sautée or a low-heat bake or heaven forbid a constantly stirred simmer. Some people joke about burning pots of water, but I've done exactly that not just on occassion but regularly. Cooking is boring and so I walk away in the middle of it, telling myself I'll only be gone a second to look at this thing over here, but inevitably, twenty chapters of Vanity Fair later, the air tastes like burning and oops, I did it again.
That said, the following recipe for fresh pasta sauce includes more than two ingredients, but it's quick and easy enough that even I can make it without absentmindedly torching the house or needing to duct tape the back of my wrist to my forehead in a permanent display of my utter put-outtedness. Quick + easy + ingredients in my backyard = pasta sauce on all days that end with "y"!
(I don't like going to the grocery store (the germy carts! the awful elbowy customers!) so this recipe is especially good because as long as we have a hundred darling little tins of tomato paste, we're set to not only survive the apocalypse via the bounty of our land but to survive it without the whining that comes with cooking anything that takes longer than fifteen minutes to prepare.)
Ingredients:
--1 darling little tin of tomato paste
--3-4 cups of peeled, chopped tomatoes (from the garden!)
--olive oil
--chopped garlic to taste (or save your fingers with garlic-infused olive oil) (from the store!)
--chopped onions, squash, zucchini, mushrooms, peppers, whatever (from the garden!)
--basil (from the garden!)
--oregano (garden!)
--salt and pepper to taste
Here's what we do: In a large saucepan heat up some garlic olive oil and carmelize the onions. (Simon does this while I watch Moving Up and surf the innernets.) Dump in whatever other chopped vegetables we have on hand. Meanwhile, chop the stem ends off the tomatoes and plop them in a pot of boiling water for about thirty seconds; the skin will peel right off so we can toss it in the compost bin. (Keep the hot tomato water so we can use it for the pasta in a minute.) Chop the blanched tomatoes and throw them in with the onion/veggie mixture along with the can of tomato paste. Sing a song we made up about licopene (it's really keen!). Put a lid on the whole mess, start the leftoever tomato water boiling, and go watch TV for five minutes. Set an alarm so we I don't forget that I'm cooking. Tear myself away during a commercial break and pour the bag of pasta into the now-boiling tomato water. Cook according to directions (8ish minutes). Now is also a good time to add the herbs, as they'll have time to wilt into flavorful goodness but not lose their color (i.e., ignore the basil you see in the first picture below). Drain al dente pasta and then combine with sauce in saucepan (if we're feelin' fancy) or just scoop some pasta into a bowl and pour the sauce on top. Sprinkle with an unhealthy amount of parmesan cheese and consume with a sidedish of self-congratulation.
It's that time of year at our house, too, and today I canned some tomatoes but managed to eff it up. One of the jars broke in the pot of water. That was fun. And scalding.
I love tomato season. Your sauce looks terrific!
Posted by: Assertagirl at August 15, 2007 03:18 PMMMMMM I loves me some homemade pasta sauce (from the garden!) Can't wait 'til our garden is ready to give us enough maters, herbs and peppers at once so's we can make some.
Posted by: Emily at August 15, 2007 03:39 PMLeah, you and I are from different planets. I can't think of too many things I enjoy more than going to the grocery store to select perfect ingredients, then going home and carefully chopping, whisking, basting, and I will happily stand at the stove for inordinate amounts of time to make sure something is appropriately constantly stirred.
Still, that's a yummy-looking sauce. The only thing better than pasta sauce made from fresh garden veggies is salsa made from same.
Posted by: Doola! at August 15, 2007 04:29 PMAnd that is why you'll be preparing dinner on Saturday night while I sit on the deck with a cocktail! :)
Posted by: Leah at August 15, 2007 04:37 PMOooh I am so jealous of your tomatoes! We had some and then it rained. And rained. And rained. And they rotted and got infested with bugs. Sigh. But Texas has a longish growing season so we can try again. But your garden makes me so very jealous.
That's my kind of sauce too. I make that as often as I can. Mmmm simple sauce.
Assertagirl- That happened to me too with a quart of salsa. It was so sad and messy. But I do love canning!
I think your hair looks cute (and where did you get that shirt? It's also darling)!
I love those kinds of recipes -- simple and fresh.
That looks tasty! I will be making that once my tomatoes ripen :)
Posted by: Angella at August 15, 2007 08:07 PMYou and your hair and your shirt are absolutely adorable, and your tomatoes and the pasta/sauce look absolutely delicious. This is something even *I* could make, because I, like you, burn boiling water. I can't tell you how many times I've done it, but it's about as many times as I've boiled water.
Oh, and I am hideously envious of your deck/patio/whatever.
Posted by: Jodi at August 16, 2007 01:48 AMI'm really quite envious of all the gardeny goodness you've been posting about! But I shall nevertheless pass on my couldn't-be-quicker-or-easier-or-tastier recipe (if one could even call it that) for slow roasted tomatoes. They're like little veggie sweeties!
1. Preheat oven to 140C (eep, you'll have to convert to F)
2. Slice a baking tray's worth of tomatoes into halves if they're small, quarters if they're big
3. Sprinkle liberally with salt and black pepper (no oil needed!)
4. Bung in the oven, set your timer for 60 mins, mosey off and watch an episode of Gilmore Girls
5. Remove from oven and feast! They're lovely with pasta, or salad, or on their own.
"(like a wolf)"
that little addition made my morning.
I didn't know you could buy garlic-infused olive oil (from the store!). Does it have a nice garlic taste to it, or do you still need to add more crushed garlic to really taste it?
By the by, the sauce looks delicioso.
Posted by: cardiogirl at August 16, 2007 05:21 AMLooks fantabulous!
Posted by: carrster at August 16, 2007 07:47 AMOh wow! It's 8:38am and I'm hungry for pasta. That looks fantastic!
Posted by: Elizabeth at August 16, 2007 08:39 AMSara--The shirt was from Old Navy. I thought it looked a little too Daisy Mae, but Simon liked it so much he bought it for me.
Cardiogirl--We have a lot of hippy grocery stores around here, so we have all kinds of crazy olive oils at hand. The garlic stuff is plenty flavorful for my taste (I like it mild), but Simon also seems to pleased with it (he'll roast a whole head of garlic and eat it plain).
Cath--That's a great recipe. Easy peasy and it involves television!
Posted by: Leah at August 16, 2007 10:34 AMI ordered pasta with tomato sauce for lunch because of those photos.
It was good but not as good as I imagine yours tasted.
Posted by: Clink at August 16, 2007 01:11 PMA song about lycopene? Nice.
We sing a lot of songs, too, usually set to the tune of "Summertime" (Gershwin, natch). My favorite is one about showering but it's not really fit for public consumption just yet - needs fine tuning.
Posted by: Alyce at August 16, 2007 01:15 PMI've been collecting recipes that people have been posting about lately and so now I have a massive pile of printed out blog posts from people and this will be in that pile come morning.
Now if only I could figure out how exactly to cook something that isn't from Lean Cuisine, then we'll be all set.
Posted by: Heather B. at August 16, 2007 07:19 PMLooks fabulous! One thing we're looking forward to about the new yard? Growing some of our own stuff!!
Posted by: Chris Cactus at August 17, 2007 08:04 AMMmmm... That looks delicious.
Seems easy enough for me to try. I, like you, are more into the "Im starving, give me something quick" type of meal. But, being a wife and a mommy of two, I HAVE to cook. This looks fantastic!!
Posted by: Sabrina at August 17, 2007 08:13 AMNothing like yummy (and pretty) food from the garden. While there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with your hair, I've been told that beer (poured on the head, not consumed orally) is a great conditioner.
IBS control can also mean getting enough fiber. I don't want to sound like your mother, but are you? Uh, never mind.
Posted by: Texas T-bone at August 17, 2007 12:15 PM
