Happy Labor Day!

it came out so beautifully!

Hope everyone enjoyed their 3-day weekend. I went shopping and ended up cooking a roasted tomato sauce from scratch. I haven't made pasta in a really long time and I needed something for lunch this upcoming week, so I figured I had some extra time today to make some tomato sauce. Mmm.. plus I have a lot of pent up stress in me; thank goodness cooking allows me to take my mind off of other things. I have to say that as simple as this sauce is to make, it has a whole lot of flavor--it just takes a good amount of time to make it, that's all.

pasta always comes out better when you saute it in the pan with the sauce

INGREDIENTS: 6 vine-riped tomatoes, 1 head of garlic, 2 red peppers, 1/2 vidalia onion, dried oregano & basil (obviously you can use fresh but I didn't have any on hand), crushed red pepper flakes, olive oil, salt&pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Spread out veggies (leave the garlic inside their wrapping, just cut off the stem part) on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and liberally sprinkle with olive oil, salt & pepper. Use your hands to spread everything around the veggies until they are all coated. Lastly, sprinkle with your dried herbs.
3. Stick the veggies in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the skins of the tomatoes and peppers are wrinkly & split open. You will be able to smell the delicious garlic roasting that will tell you it's finished roasting. Usually you can't really ruin veggies too badly by roasting them too long, they get more and more delicious until the point where they get really burnt so just watch out for that!
4. After removing your veggies (you can leave the skins on or remove them; I removed the skins from the red peppers, which you obviously had to remove the seeds & stem from as well, but left the skins on my tomatoes) from the oven, stick everything except for the garlic into a food processor or blender to puree everything to your desired consistency. I left my sauce a bit more on the chunky side.
5. As for the garlic, squeeze the roasted goodness out of the paper that surrounds them & mash it all up with a fork.
6. Add everything back into a saucepan on medium heat to further reduce the mixture and further develop the flavors. Cook for 15-20 minutes until you get the desired thickness of your sauce. Add some crushed red pepper flakes if you want it to be spicy, and obviously salt & pepper as needed! Near the end, add a splash more of olive oil and any fresh herbs you would like to have in your sauce.
7. Cook your pasta al dente according to the directions on the package them came in. Add into sauce and cook it for 3-4 minutes to get all the flavors absorbed into your pasta. Add cheese in you'd like (I didn't have any cheese unfortunately). It is ok not to completely drain your pasta from the water it had boiled in. That water actually contains starches that will help thicken your sauce and bring the whole pasta together. What I did was just take a slotted spoon and transferred the pasta to my saucepan with my sauce in it.

[2 cups of Barilla mezze penne pasta] packed and ready to take for lunches!

-J