I am lucky enough to live near several farms that produce either certified organic, transitioning to organic or sustainably grown produce from May to the end of November. After all, New Jersey is called the Garden State for a reason. We have some of the most lovely farm land in the country. Now that the weather is starting to turn cooler in the mornings and evenings I am happy to get back to one of my favorite ways of cooking all those beautiful tomatoes, onions, garlic, squash, tomatillos, peppers, green beans, eggplants and whatever else shows up in my farm share box each week. Oven roasted vegetables have such an amazing flavor and are so easy to incorporate in to your everyday dishes.
To me the best way to use up the weekly harvest before it goes bad is to make homemade pasta sauce. It’s such a simple way to make sure my family is getting the most nutrition out of something they already love. This week we received our first batch of tomatillos in our share and I was so excited to see them. Most people use them in salsas, but I love the zippy flavor they give to sauces and soups. So I added them to the regular line up of veggies and the results were as expected.
I know most people use some sort of oil when they roast vegetables. I choose to dry roast them except for a bit of water in the bottom of the roasting dish. I feel like I am getting the true, sweet, rich flavors of the vegetables rather than the flavor of the oil this way. Also, it’s really much healthier to drizzle a bit of olive oil on after if you love that flavor, than it is to roast them in the oil. Here’s why.
Tonight’s pasta sauce was made with:
3- large tomatoes
1- large red onion cut in half
3- cloves of garlic
10- tomatillos
This morning while the oven was preheating to 400 degrees, I washed the tomatoes and took the outer leaves off the tomatillos and gave them a good rinse. I put all of the veggies in a large glass baking dish with a half an inch of water in the bottom. I set the timer for 30 minutes and read my little guy a story. When the timer went off, I took the dish out of the oven and let it cool on top of the stove til the afternoon. When I was ready to make the sauce, I put two batches of veggies in to the blender and blended it to a smooth red sauce.
Now I have a large container of delicious pasta sauce that I can season any way I want with fresh or dried herbs and spices.
*A helpful hint that I learned from my parents when it comes to making homemade tomato sauce, is to cook a carrot in the sauce to cut down on the acidity level of the tomatoes. I also like to add a tablespoon of butter to my sauce when I’m heating it up to add to pasta. The added oil and fat from the butter helps to absorb more nutrients from the vegetables. Here’s a little article from WebMD on that.
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