No-Cook Tomato Sauce

There is nothing I love more from a garden than fresh tomatoes. Sure, you can find a fairly good tomato at the grocery store, but the extra sweetness from the sun makes every bite of a garden tomato so flavorful.  No-Cook Tomato Sauce is one of my favorite ways to showcase these beauties.  It is really an easy dish, and, as indicated by its title, it doesn’t take much time to prepare.

This is not the time to use those green or green-ish tomatoes. The key to this sauce is definitely using fresh, red, juicy garden tomatoes.

To make the sauce, you will need about four cups of quartered or really largely diced red garden tomatoes, four cloves of fresh garlic, three tablespoons of olive oil, six large leaves of fresh basil, one tablespoon of fresh oregano leaves, one teaspoon of kosher salt and a hint of cracked black pepper.

Combine the ingredients together in a food processor and pulse until well mixed but while the tomatoes appear to still have a few small “chunks” to them. Have no fear if you do not have a food processor at home; you can also do this in a blender or by being very good with your chef’s knife. Getting a small dice on all of the ingredients and a stirring together in a mixing bowl should work just fine, also. After you make the sauce, set it aside.

Boil your pasta according to package directions, and let it drain. Do not rinse your pasta.

At this point, you have a couple options. You can choose to return the pasta to the pot, add the sauce, and toss until it is combined, or you could put the pasta right into a serving bowl and spoon the sauce over the top.

Garnish it with a few fresh basil leaves, and you will have a dish that will look bright, colorful and is sure to make you wish garden tomato season would last forever!