Pasta with slow-roasted tomato sauce
By Simon Holst
Cooking the tomatoes slowly like this concentrates their flavour. Then it’s simply a matter of processing them into a sauce, adjusting the seasonings and stirring the sauce through some pasta – it couldn’t be much easier.
For 4 servings:
1kg ripe tomatoes
1 red onion
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
6-8 cloves of garlic
2 Tbspn olive oil
Handful of fresh basil
Salt and pepper to taste
1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius
2. Quarter the tomatoes and remove the hard bits where the stems were attached. Scatter them in a large, baking paper or Teflon lined roasting dish. Cut the onion into eighths and core the peppers then cut the flesh into strips. Scatter these over the tomatoes.
3. Place the garlic cloves in the centre of a 20cm square of tin foil, add a splash of olive oil, then scrunch up the foil to make a small package. Place the foil package in a corner of the roasting pan, then drizzle the remaining oil over the vegetables.
4. Place the oven dish in the oven and roast for 90 minutes at 150 degrees Celsius, stirring the vegetables once gently after about an hour.
5. Remove the roast vegetables from the oven and leave until cool enough to handle. Lift the foil-wrapped garlic from the pan, then tip the vegetable mixture (and any juices) into a food processor or blender. Unwrap the roasted garlic and squeeze the contents of the paper skins into the vegetables, then process until smooth. Add the basil leaves, process again, then season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Pour over lightly-oiled cooked pasta. Toss to combine, then serve.