Simple home made pasta sauce plus a trick

Papardelle in home made pasta sauce

This is a simple pasta sauce which we have been preparing at home and which the girls love.  The first ever tomato based sauce they actually ate after eating naked pasta for what seemed like a thousand years.  This recipe is so simple we make them on a whim.  Well, when pasta is the order of the day.

1 kilo Roma tomatoes, quartered

half bunch fresh thyme, chopped

half bunch fresh basil, chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely diced

half bunch fresh oregano, chopped (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil

Pre heat oven to 180* C.  

Line a roasting or baking pan with baking paper or aluminum foil.  Line the tomato wedges in the pan.

Sprinkle the garlic and chopped herbs over the tomatoes.  

Season with salt and pepper.  

Drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil.

Roast in the oven for 45-50minutes.

Puree in a food processor (or better if you own a blender, use that).

This yielded enough sauce to be used for the evening's dinner plus more (a cup and  half) kept in the fridge for future cravings.

Voila!  Pasta sauce!

And here's a pasta tip:    Roughly break lasagna sheets and cook in boiling water for 8 minutes or until al dente.  And there you have: pappardelle!  Just make sure you stir the pot constantly to avoid the pasta from sticking to each other.

Pappardelle are the thick sheets of pasta mostly sold in good providore and deli's.  But hard to find at your local supermarket.  So improvise if you can.  And instead of the boring spaghetti, you have something different! 

The lasagna sheets turned pappardelle also were part of a carbonara dinner which we made using left over glazed ham from the new year's eve feast.

Carbonara pappadelle with NYE glazed ham

Going back to the star of the show - ze pasta sauce.  We are keeping this in our pasta dish repertoire for good.  Because being a mum means discovering dishes which my kids will love, this is one simple and humble sauce which shall be the start (base) of many more sauces to come!  Magnifico!  And as for the pasta noodle, my girls said, "ingenious!"  A bit biased maybe.  They're my kids after all!  

Enjoy your weekend everyone!