Please tell me you have room left in your big food-loving heart for a last tomato recipe. Please tell me that you’re kitchen looks like mine and you have too many left over tomatoes (and bell peppers and jalapeños) than you know what to do with. And now, take a deep breath, because we are going to cook all of those tomatoes down into a smooth, creamy, almost sweet sauce that you can eat right away or freeze for those days when you have the wintertime blues and desperately need a late-summer tomato pick-me-up.
(And if you need to use up some jalapeños, throw a party and click here for your appetizer. And then double triple quadruple the recipe because people love those things.)
Food friends, I must admit, I did not even make this sauce. I was at my parent’s house last weekend and this is what happens when I’m at my parents:
Danielle opens the refrigerator, pulls out various sizes of Tupperware. Opens and closes some of them. Also opens some of them and keeps them open and grabs a spoon to taste. Then grabs a fork to taste something else. Danielle sniffs another homemade dish and maybe just closes it right back up instead of tasting it. Danielle then puts everything back in the refrigerator in its rightful place.
Fast-forward one hour. Mom enters the kitchen. “Can I show you what I made this week?” [Mom, like me, is forever in the kitchen trying new recipes and making way too much food than will feed two mouths.] Mom opens the refrigerator, pulls out various size of Tupperware. Danielle pretends not to have tasted (or sniffed) any of these foods, so Mom can have the joy of showing them off.
“What do you think of this Eggplant Soup. Dad hates it. But I think it’s really good! And I’m going to make him eat it anyway.”
“Did you try the marinated eggplant? Do you want to take some with you.” (The answer is YES. Mom’s marinated eggplant is the BOMB DOT COM. But you can’t kiss anyone for days afterward (the garlic), so it must be strategically eaten.)
And finally, “Oh my gosh. You have to try this Creamy Tomato Sauce. But it has no cream!!!” (Mom and I get really excited over recipes that taste delicious and decadent, but are secretly super-healthy.
I tasted the sauce and then I declared, “This must get on the blog. Right. Away.” And so here we are, foodie friends! The sauce that is creamy without cream and almost sweet without sugar. The sauce that Mom and I are going crazy over right now.
Simplest Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 4 cups cherry tomatoes if substituting larger tomatoes, I suggest cutting them into 1x1-inch pieces, stems removed
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/3 cup fresh basil
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
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Spread tomatoes in a single layer in a pan. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with onion powder.
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Bake for 35 minutes or until tomatoes are wrinkly.
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Let cool for a few minutes, then put tomatoes in food processor. Add fresh basil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper and blend until smooth.
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To serve: I added a few handfuls of spinach to the finished sauce and simmered it on the stove until the spinach wilted. Then I poured it over pasta and topped it with cheese. I <3 ricotta, but you can use whatever you like!
For this dish, I used Explore Asian Soybean Spaghetti, which is gluten free, high in protein, and high in fiber. Here’s another recipe in which I fall all over myself talking about how much I love Explore Asian noodles. I will probably never turn back to standard pasta.
