The greatest pasta sauce you can ever make.
I do not title this blog post lightly. I am not kidding, I have not experienced flavor like this, and will most likely be making my sauces like this from now on. I bucked the sauce making trend on this, leaving both the seeds and skins on our tomatoes. It turns out, this was a good idea. What you will need, with almost zero measurements… not because I am a dick about it, but because everything is to taste:
8-10 ripe tomatoes
Olive oil
salt
pepper
An entire head of garlic
1 onion
Fresh basil/oregano
First, cut the tomatoes in half and toss them in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then, light up a charcoal grill, get that sucker SCREAMING hot. Roast the holy hell out of those tomatoes. You want them to get charred. Don’t worry, they are full of moisture, the skin will mostly char leaving the flesh soft and juicy. This is why it is important to leave the skin on, it holds a solid metric ton of flavor. It will look something like this:
I cooked them cut side down first so they didn’t just melt into the grill, then flipped them and roasted the skins on them. Scrapped them off, threw them into a big bowl. Simultaneously to this, Beth was slicing large slivers of garlic, dousing them in olive oil, and cooking them in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. She then sauteed up a diced onion, to which we added the roasted tomatoes, the garlic/oil mixture, and the aromatics. We simmered this down, creating this:
When in doubt, use simple ingredients, grill it on charcoal.
Category: food | Tags: food 2 comments »
August 31st, 2009 at 7:40 am
I wonder if smoke-roasting the tomatoes over indirect heat with a bit of hickory or something would yield an even better result?
August 31st, 2009 at 9:49 am
Interesting. In the name of science, perhaps we should do this next weekend. I have another bag of tomatoes that will be ripe right around then.