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Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 15 Minutes |
Ready In: 30 Minutes Servings: 4 |
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This is an aromatic, slightly spicy, topping for any kind of pasta, made with fresh baby or cherry tomatoes, chilies, and herbs. Ingredients:
500 g cherry tomatoes |
200 g semi sun-dried tomatoes |
1 red pepper |
1 red onion |
5 -7 garlic cloves |
1/2 small red chile (optional) |
1 teaspoon ground cumin |
1 teaspoon ground coriander |
1 teaspoon dried oregano |
1 pinch salt (optional) |
1/3 cup virgin olive oil, cold pressed |
Directions:
1. Wash tomatoes and chop in half. Cut semi-dried tomatoes.
2. Get your swimming goggles and snorkel!
3. Chop off both ends of onion, stand onion on one flat side and cut down the centre. Lay sides flat, and slice length-wise four times, then width wise four times each half.
4. Now you can take your goggles off.
5. Cut root ends off garlic cloves, then with large fat knife (such as a cleaver) press hard down on clove. The skin will come off very easily. Then chop garlic into large chunks.
6. Chop red pepper into same size as onion, being careful to full deseed and cut off all white bits.
7. Invest in some food preparer's plastic gloves. The kind that come attached to instruction sheet in some home hair colouring kits will do, too.
8. With gloves, slice green tip off of little red chilie. Slice lengthwise, then with table knife, scrape seeds and white bits into garbage. Chop into tiny bits.
9. Now you can take the gloves off. Make sure not to touch your face (especially your eyes!) with the gloves.
10. Heat some olive oil in large pan, a shallow dutch oven is great, over a medium high flame or medium high heat, and fry onions slowly until translucent.
11. Add peppers (red and chiie) for another five minutes.
12. Add herbs and a little more oil and reduce heat to medium low.
13. Now add the tomatoes and after you get a little bubbling, reduce heat again if needed and simmer, stirring occasionally for 1/2 hour. It is also incredible cooked just till tomatoes are hot, ten minutes!
14. You can use more chilie, or no chilie, or dried chilie, and fresh oregano is even better if you can get it where you are.
15. Sometimes I mix and match things, using yellow baby tomatoes and orange peppers in the summer for the colour. I also like a splash of Worcestershire (pronounces wooster, oo as is foot) sauce or some red wine or even white wine. Even a splash of vodka can be nice, if you cook the sauce a very long time.
16. The longer you cook the tomatoes, the better for them they are, unlike many other vegetables (yes, okay, they are not really vegetables - ).
17. Finally, there are some excellent alternatives to wheat pastas, including rice pasta, which is made especially for Mediterranean cooking, probably in any pasta aisle or health food aisle or store.
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