This dinner was super fantastic and was ready in the time it took to boil water and make pasta. It's just a simple sauce of the freshest garden tomatoes (I used several colours) and the pasta gets it's final moments of cooking in the sauce which is light and soupy. It's truly one of those dishes that is greater than a sum of its parts. If you are growing tomatoes or have access to the inexpensive baskets of field tomatoes cropping up all over the place then please, please make this pasta. I used some prosciutto ends from the fridge and pasta from the pantry making this meal cost under $1 per serving.
With a green salad, some wine, and a nice crusty bread, I'd serve this to Jamie-frickin'-Oliver himself.
Summer tomato pasta
- Put on a big pot of cold, salted water to boil
- Chop up 2 or 3 slices of prosciutto into a small dice, chop up an assortment of tomatoes - I used 6 good sized ones - yellow lemon boys, some Orange Striped Germans, a large red Early Girl slicing tomato and one roma tomato that was ripe and ready
- In a large skillet heat a tablespoon of olive oil over med high heat, add a tsp of dried chili flakes and your prosciutto, cook it down a minute so the chili flavours the oil and the prosciutto crisps
- Add the tomatoes and all of the wonderful juice that has pooled on the cutting board. At this point that water should be a rolling boil - throw in the pasta - I used a box of linguine noodles as that what we had but Orecchiette would be super nice and the little divots would capture the tomato juice wonderfully
- Add in 2 cloves of garlic crushed and cook down the tomatoes until they start to break down and the liquid starts to thicken. Add in some thinly cut fresh basil and reserve some for garnishing cause that looks pretty
- When your pasta is al dente reserve some pasta water and drain your pasta, add to the sauce and let it cook for a few minute more - the pasta will soak up some of the tomatoey liquid - if you need to loosen things up add some of the pasta water in
- Serve, garnish with the reserved basil.
Hubs would like me to add that this is also great topped with some fresh grated hard cheese like parmesan or pecorino but I ate mine plain and didn't think it needed anything extra - except maybe some bread for juice sopping......
Here's the photo I worked so hard to get (if you call eating yummy pasta two nights in a row work!)
