Spaghetti with crushed tomatoes
I was asked by the lovely Olga from Mango and Tomato to write a guestblog for the time when she will be on holiday…. Ofcourse with a blog called Mango and tomato, it would be fun to choose a dish with either mango or tomato (or both) in them. Now I love both those ingredients so not such a very hard task. Plus – since I am on a diet – tomatoes are a perfect choice as there is hardly any calories in them…
I had recently bought the new book from Donna Hay, “No time to cook” and while I did have time to cook, I figured today would be the perfect day to try one of the recipes and see if it really would be as quick as no cooking. The title is actually a little misleading; if you’re thinking you’re buying a book with all sort of recipes that require no cooking at all, then you should be buying something else. It does require cooking but it’s just very quick. What I also like about the book is that most of the recipes are for two. Saves me all those calculations I always have to do…
Ingredients
Tom is gonna be home late today, so I can easily make this twice; it is that fast. With spaghetti I prefer to make it fresh since that simply tastes the best.
Now one little word of warning; the recipe wants you to bruise all the cherry tomatoes. Removing the pits and some of the inside juices apparently is meant to enhance the flavour. So I faithfuly set about doing just that; now tomatoes have a funny way of behaving when you pinch a really ripe tomato! The proof is all over my kitchen! lol… So be careful when you want to make this, as even being careful doesn’t prevent the odd flying tomato- sauce!
The only thing that needed boiling for this recipe was the spaghetti, but that is not really work at all. Except for the garlic, no other cutting is required and it’s literally done and on the table in about 10-15 minutes. Really really simple and quite tasty. I would add probably a little bit of maybe smoked chicken in there for next time, or little bits of ham. Just to spice it up a little bit.
I like my pasta to be simple, with really not a lot of ingredients and this was a perfect example of a good pasta with minimum effort.
Spaghetti with bruised tomatoes (from Donna Hay; No time to cook) serves 2
200 gr spaghetti
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 cloves of garlic
fresh basil
500 gr cherry tomatoes (I used honey cherry tomatoes, which are lovely and sweet)
seasalt
30 gr of butter
Cook the spaghetti in about 10-12 minutes. Chop up the garlic and squish the tomatoes so part of the juice and the seeds are removed. In a pan heat the butter (or use olive oil if you prefer) and add the garlic, balsamic and cherry tomatoes and heat them through untill the tomatoes become warm and a little bit soft. Once the spaghetti is cooked, add to the tomato-balsamic mixture and add fresh basil. Serve.
I added parmezan as no pasta is complete without a little sprinkle of cheese (or so I think) but add whatever you like to this, as it’s a perfect base recipe.
Enjoy!
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