Cook: Nancy Harmon Jenkins
Source: Cucinaamore.com
It's difficult to imagine a more mundane-sounding dish than Pasta with Baked Tomato Sauce — and yet this extremely simple pasta is a breakthrough, not like any other you've ever eaten. And so good you'll make it again and again.
The sauce is made from roasted cherry tomatoes, very ripe ones. These diminutive tomatoes with the big taste are then covered with a cheesey-garlicky-bread crumb mixture and set in the oven. Just before serving, you tear some basil leaves into the roasted tomato mixture and that's your sauce, right in the oven dish: add some corkscrew or butterfly pasta and you have dinner.
Italian cookbook author Nancy Harmon Jenkins points out that the ony trick to this dish is using really ripe cherry tomatoes'which are easy to find all year long. If they're not available, use any red, ripe tomatoes and quarter them.
Ingredients
* 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 pound very ripe cherry tomatoes, halved
* 1/3 cup plain dry bread crumbs
* 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
* 2 tablespoons freshly grated pecorino cheese
* 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
* Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
* 1 pound dried fusilli (corkscrew) or farfalline (butterfly) pasta
* 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves, torn
Preparations
Preheat the oven to 400°. Grease a 13-by-9-inch baking dish with one-third of the oil. Place the tomatoes cut side up in the dish. In a small bowl, combine the bread crumbs, cheeses, and garlic and toss with a fork to mix well. Sprinkle the bread-crumb mixture over the tomatoes, making sure that each cut side is well covered with the crumb mixture. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake until the tomatoes are cooked through and starting to brown on top, about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until al dente. Time the pasta so it finishes cooking about the time the tomatoes are ready to come out of the oven.
Reference ; http://www.epicurious.com/
