Farm to Table Pasta Sauce

This morning we will make a roasted tomato pasta sauce, to be enjoyed at afternoon snack time. In case you want to recreate the magic at home, here is the recipe. Enjoy! 

Ingredients:

Roma tomatoes, stemmed and cut in half, to completely cover the bottom of a baking pan (with sides).  

An onion, sliced
A handful of fresh basil, or a couple of pinches of dried herbs
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
Olive oil, about ¼ cup
1 t. salt
1 t. sugar
black pepper to taste

Here’s what you do:

Preheat your oven to 375.

Cut the stems off of your tomatoes and then cut them in half again long ways.  Lay them all out on your pan, skin side up.  They should be in a single layer but they should fill the pan completely.

Top the tomatoes with the onion, basil, and garlic.

Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil, about a ¼ cup.  (You really don’t need to measure.)

Sprinkle with salt, sugar, and black pepper.

Stick the pan in the oven for 2 hours.  After the first hour, the veggies will be swimming in juice.  Then, the juice will start to reduce to thick and sweet syrup.  The tomatoes will collapse and blacken a little.  The kitchen will smell like an Italian restaurant.  Hungry people will come out of the woodwork.

Take the pan out the oven.  Let everything cool just a little and then put the contents of the pan into your food processor. Process, and adjust the seasoning as needed.