Fresh Tomato Sauce

We got four huge tomatoes in our CSA this week from a hot house in Nebraska. It's great to have local tomatoes this early, but after a conversation with my Aunt who lives in Nebraska, I have mixed feelings about these guys due to the amount of energy needed to run the hot house.

Kimber apparently didn't like the way the tomatoes were grown either; when Nick left to take me to the bus one morning, she took a couple bites out of two of them!! With the two we had left, I made a fresh tomato sauce with basil also from our CSA bag. It's easy to make a simple sauce by sautéing garlic and onions in olive oil, then addding roughly chopped tomatoes and salt to the pot. I added some crushed red pepper as well. As soon as the pasta was done, I took it out of the pot and added it right to the sauce, making sure to drip in some starchy pasta water along with it. The starch helps the sauce cling to the noodles. I chopped fresh basil and added that to the pasta. Once I put the portions into bowls, I grated fresh Parmesan cheese on top! It was a simple pasta meal that we enjoyed on the back deck with a glass of red wine :)