10 Minute Garden Fresh Tomato Sauce

Howdy, friends – long time, no blog 🙁 I’m super sorry about that.  As it turns out, you need full use of your hands in order to 1. cook 2. take photos and 3. type – who knew?! Long story short I have carpel tunnel syndrome and it flared up along with some other swelling which made it really super difficult to do, well, anything.  This week my hands are working – hooray! So I cooked up a quick fresh tomato sauce and wanted to share it with you all.

A little background on where my fresh tomatoes and basil came from…My kids and I started our very first garden this year and it has been an AMAZING experience. I, along with my 2 and 4 year old, are complete novices, but we managed to grow a bounty of vegetables and not screw it up – cyber high five anyone?

Our garden just keeps on giving us delicious fresh food to eat and our whole family is loving it <3 I’m going to get all mushy now, but seeing my kids grow and harvest, wash and prepare their own food and be so thrilled about the experience is really, well, freaking awesome – it truly made my heart smile 🙂 Ok, end mushy mom talk and onto the food.

We have a lot of tomatoes and a lot of basil, like A LOT – did I mention that it just keeps growing?  We’ve been eating caprase everything and fresh sliced tomatoes with salt and balsamic and adding basil leaves to salads and smoothies and still we have bundles.  What’s a girl to do with an overabundance of fresh garden tomatoes and basil, but make a quick fresh tomato sauce for her kids favorite mini ravioli ?! So that, my friends, is exactly what I did.  Oh, and what’s even better is that the sauce in itself takes just 10 minutes to make!

Necessities:

2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes (garden fresh if available, but store bought will work just fine)

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves

1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt

Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

1 large garlic clove (pressed or finely chopped)

1 Tablespoon butter

1 Tablespoon olive oil

5 cups mini ravioli or other pasta of your choice (I buy the O Sol Mio brand, pictured above, at Costco. It is located in the fresh refrigerated cases usually near the meats, etc.)

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella

Method:

Start a large pot of water to boil and add a good pinch of salt to the water. While the water is coming to a boil, prepare your tomatoes and basil.

Stack fresh basil leaves and roll tightly into a log and then cut into thin strip with your knife.

If you like the long threads of basil- called a julienne cut, you can leave them as is, or chop them in the opposite direction to get smaller pieces – totally up to you.  Next roughly chop about 2 large tomatoes – skins and all, the tomatoes will cook down so don’t worry if they aren’t all the same size.

Next, in a large sauce pan over medium high heat, add in your butter and olive oil and add in the chopped garlic. Allow to cook for about 1 minute or until the garlic is nice and fragrant.

Now toss in the fresh tomatoes and stir to mix in all the garlicky butter and oil – can you smell it yet??? Also, now is the time to toss your ravioli or other pasta into the boiling water.

Add in the salt and allow the tomatoes to cook down for 4-5 minutes. Make sure to taste it and see if you need more salt – remember salt brings out the natural flavor in fresh food – so it is your friend.  If you want to add a kick sprinkle in some red pepper flakes – I opted not to so that my kids would eat it 😉

Drain your pasta and add it directly to the tomato sauce along with the fresh basil and toss to coat. You can serve it just like this and it will be delicious.

BUT…if you add mozzarella cheese and a little more fresh basil to it, it will become heavenly. Just watch…

Now I’m going to stir it….

And the cheese has started to melt and go all gooey and perfect and everything in the world just makes sense when you take a bite of this oh, so delightful garden fresh tomato and basil ravioli.

So there you have it, my dear followers, a super simple fresh tomato sauce you can master in no time and get dinner on the table in well under 30 minutes. And did I tell you that your family will love it? Because they will 😉