Roma Tomatoes Credit: all-creatures.org |
You will need, a can of whole skinned roma tomatoes or diced roma tomatoes. Fresh roma tomatoes just will not work as they will be too hard. Make sure to read the ingredients of the can you buy to make sure that they are not the disgusting kind which have green peppers and onions added to them (without telling you on the front)! Just plain roma tomatoes, maybe salt and garlic is fine, but nothing else.
The night before, open the can and strain the tomatoes because you don't want any tomato juices at all. If you buy the whole kind, then cut the tomatoes in half and rinse and strain them so you just have the tomato meat with as little juice as possible.
Place these strained tomatoes in a bowl, add garlic. You can use prepared diced garlic or crushed garlic, but don't use garlic slices, as these won't release enough flavor unless cooked. Traditionalists should use a garlic press, but when you can buy an eight-ounce jar of diced garlic for a buck, why bother with that? I love garlic, so for a 32-ounce can of tomatoes, I use a heaping teaspoon of crushed garlic. (Just make sure you enjoy this with the person you're going to be next to, for the next day or two.) Add a pinch of powered garlic if you like.
Now cover with olive oil and salt to taste. Remember you're going to be adding this to unsalted pasta, so you want it to be just on the edge of "too salty". Let this mixture sit on the counter, or in the refrigerator over-night. The idea behind covering with olive oil and letting this sit overnight, is that you want the garlic, oil, salt to completely permeate the tomato meat so every bite will be garlicy-salty-oily goodness.
Tri-color rotini |
The next day, when you're ready, make your favorite plain pasta, I like tri-colored rotini myself. Just make sure you make plain pasta, not any kind of pasta that comes in a kit with spices and sauces and nonsense like that. Then dump your tomato, garlic, oil mixture over it and eat it. If you don't go into a tomato-garlic-salt-oil induced coma than you might be a space alien.