What started as a humble experiment to make a pasta sauce stretched over 3 days to perfect and make 2 types of tomato basil pasta sauces.
The idea behind this was guided by days of reading Italian blogs on pasta sauces and then finding out differences between a chunky tomato basil sauce, Pomodoro sauce and a quick tomato basil pasta sauce. Many ended up using plum tomatoes or canned tomatoes and ingredients with less availability here in the Indian subcontinent.
Let me start by stating that this sauce isn’t easy and is more towards a spicy Arabiatta rather than a simple one. It is a two-part process. First roasting the tomatoes with garlic & herbs in the oven to bring out the maximum flavour. And then mashing it a bit, finally simmering it on the pan with more herbs to pack all the flavours in.
If you want something a little easier, a only pan based sauce, check this one out!
Ingredients:
- 8-10 Medium sized Tomatoes, preferable hybrid ones but the local round ones also work
- Half Red Capsicum cubed
- 8 peeled cloves of garlic, sliced
- 1 medium Onion, finely chopped
- 1-2 red chilies, de-seeded
- 15-20 leaves of Italian Basil or Sweet Basil
- 2-3 small sprigs of fresh Rosemary, if using dried see tip
- 3-4 springs of Thyme
- Dried or fresh Oregano
- Kashmiri red chili powder – 1 teaspoon
- Olive Oil
- Butter
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
- Packed Italian Seasoning, I used Orika’s Italian Seasoning 1 packet, you can use Dominoes too
Method for Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce:
Roasting the tomatoes
- Take a baking dish and drizzle it with some olive oil, just enough to coat all the sides. Halve all of the tomatoes and put 5-6 pods of peeled garlic into separate tomatoes (refer image below). Add the cubed capsicums into the baking dish as well. Then add a couple of dashes of olive oil over it and season with freshly ground pepper and salt, Do be careful as this sauce will reduce heavily so don’t need too much of salt.
- Preheat the oven to 160 deg C and place the baking tray in for 25 minutes or until the tomatoes start disintegrating. Add fresh rosemary, thyme, oregano and almost half the basil to the pan. Keep it back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. After an hour the tomatoes should have released their juices in the tray while shrinking a bit. Here discard the rosemary & thyme if you are using it provided you have more of it. Else, just discard the stems of both. See Tip if you are using dried rosemary, thyme or oregano.
- Take the dish out and carefully pluck the tomato skins out. it was a little difficult for me but I think it’s because I did it while they were piping hot. This might cause a little wastage so try to extract the stuck tomato pulp from the skin using a spoon and put it in a pan. After removing the skin, blitz the tomatoes very lightly.
After blitzing the tomatoes, put them back in the baking tray to get those sticky bits combined with the sauce.
Making the tomato basil pasta sauce
- In a non-stick pan and add 1.5 tsp each of olive oil and butter. Add 3 pods of garlic into the same along with de-seeded red chillies, rosemary, oregano and thyme. Let the chilies flavour and the herbs the oil while being careful not to burn them add the chopped onion when the garlic begins to brown up. If you didn’t discard the rosemary and thyme in the second step and don’t have any more of it then don’t add them here. See Tip if you are using dried rosemary, thyme or oregano.
- Saute the onion for 2-3 minutes on medium flame and then add your blitzed mixture of tomatoes. Mash down any big particles and keep adding water so that the paste doesn’t stick to the bottom. Let it cook on a low low flame for 30 minutes. At the 15 minute mark, add the Kashmiri red chilli powder and the leftover basil. Let it cook on a low low flame for 30 minutes. Continue to cook it with water. Let the flavour of basil intensify while you cook the tomatoes. In the end add the packet of Italian seasoning and adjust the salt and pepper to taste.
6. Let it cool down. If you want a smoother sauce, blitz it once again and for storage. Keep in an airtight container with a drizzle of olive oil.
Cooking Tips
Tip 1: If using dried oregano, it would be advisable that you only use it after the roasting process in complete, dried oregano has no water so it absorbs water quickly and released those favor too in water.
Add the all the dried herbs together right after you have sauteed the onions.
Tip 2: If you are blitzing the sauce in the end too, remove the fresh rosemary, thyme and oregano as its not advisable to blitz their stems, if you want you can remove the leaves and discard the stem.
I love this Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce so much as roasting and slow cooking the tomatoes lend the most flavour to it. The fresh herbs also pack a punch and their flavour simply unmistakable.