Ingredients
- 90ml olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced very thinly
- 1kg cherry tomatoes, cut in half
- ½ tsp caster sugar (or a bit more or less, depending on the tomatoes sweetness)
- 2 dried ancho chillies, roughly torn (or other dried, mildish chillies)
- Salt
- 20g basil leaves, torn, plus 5g extra, finely chopped just before serving, to garnish ( I had none and omitted)
- 400g spaghetti
- 35g parmesan, finely grated
Put 75ml of the oil in a large saute pan on a medium-high heat. Once hot, add the garlic and fry for up to a minute, stirring a few times, until it’s just starting to caramelise. Add the tomatoes (be gentle, or the oil may spit), sugar, chillies and half a teaspoon of salt. Add 200ml water and stir through for four minutes, until the tomatoes are starting to break down and the liquid is bubbling. Turn down the heat to medium-low and cook for an hour, stirring every once in a while, until the tomatoes have completely broken down and the sauce has thickened. Stir through the torn basil and keep somewhere warm.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to boil, add the pasta and cook for 10-12 minutes (or according to the instructions on the packet), until the pasta is cooked but still retains a bite. Drain, return the pasta to the pan and stir in the remaining oil. Divide the spaghetti between the bowls, spoon over the tomato sauce, sprinkle over the parmesan and serve at once, with a sprinkle of finely chopped basil on top.
Method
Another day, another Otto recipe. This one is from Simple and was cooked by the Eldest and the Current Boyfriend over the Christmas holidays. Any recipe that starts with "take 1kg of tomatoes" is either going to be good or a waste. Fortunately this one is good. He essentially distills the umami from all the tomatoes into a small amount of pasta sauce which then has an intense flavour. It is a good way of improving the flavour of otherwise not-very-tasty tomatoes such as the ones you get in mid-winter in bulk packets, which is what we used.
This is a good sauce for pasta, worth making a big quantity if you have access to a large quantity of cheap tomatoes. Otto is (in his usual way) a bit anal about what kind of chillis to use in this and his other recipes. As always don't use the absence of a specific ingredient as an excuse not to try the dish. This one is worth it and will be a crowd-pleaser that few can objet to (even my 2 non-tomato favouring youngest Offspring).Be aware though that the process of concentrating the tomoto flavour takes an hour.....
The recipe is for 4, although you may want to adjust the pasta quantity if you have hungry Tweenies...