Basil goes with almost anything, but it goes especially well with tomatoes. The Greek word for basil means “king”. Which really fits this highly used culinary herb.
Today we pruned our basil back to keep it from blooming. So tonight we had “Fresh Basil Tomato Sauce” over ravioli. Yummmmm it was good.
Our tomatoes are not ready so I made replaced the fresh tomatoes in this recipe with 2 – 15 oz. cans of tomatoes in puree. I also cut the cooking time down to 30 min. And because the spinach is plentiful I added 2 handfuls of spinach right at the end of the cooking time.
Basil Tomato Sauce
8 medium sized tomatoes – like Better Boy 1 lg. onion finely chopped 3 cloves garlic minced 1/4 c. olive oil 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes 1/3 c. fresh chopped basilsalt and pepper to taste Blanch tomatoes so skins slip easily. Put tomatoes and basil in large sauce pan and cook over medium heat. Sweat onion and garlic in the oil. When the onion is translucent, add to the tomato sauce and simmer on low heat until thick. About 1.5 hrs. Serve over spaghetti or ravioli. Top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and chopped fresh basil.
Fresh Basil Tomatoe Sauce With Spinach
Tip for cooking pasta
When cooking pasta for a crowd or warming up pasta, precook your pasta until it is almost done. Save your cooking water and warm up the pasta in the hot water as it is needed. I doing this with my pasta cooker.
In the next few posts I have tips on growing basil and different basil uses.
Enjoy!
Sheila
4 responses so far ↓
1 Kathy Griffiths // Jul 8, 2010 at 4:03 am
Looks good. I love basil and I have several different kinds of basil growing in my herb garden. I make sure and keep the blooms picked off so the basil will spread and last all summer long.
Kathy Griffiths recently posted..Oh Say Can You See… – 4th Of July
Sheila Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
It is good. I like light sauces in the summer and this one is perfect on any type of pasta.
When the zucchini come starts producing add it to the sauce.
Yes pick off the blooms keeps most herbs producing. Liana in another comment likes to keep the blooms on for the butterflies.
2 Camille // Jul 17, 2010 at 3:26 am
I am Itialian and a sucker for pasta of any kind. This is a great tip. Thank you. I cannot wait until the zucchini comes on. My favorite pasta sauce has zucchini in it.
Didn’t know the butterflies liked the blooms. I may keep a few on for them.
3 Denise Passehl
Twitter: lovelivinggreen
// Jul 20, 2010 at 12:14 am
This sounds so good, I hve basil in my herb garden and will try this asap since I have fresh tomotoes in my garden now.
Denise Passehl recently posted..Help- my Refrigerator Died!