Garden Tomato Sauce

I love pasta. Love.  If one day I had to cut carbs out of my diet, I would be a wreak..a healthy portion of my favorite dishes are pasta dishes.  You would think that if I love pasta so much that I would have a good red sauce recipe, right? Well, that wasn't the case-until today.

So, I pinned the garden tomato sauce recipe pin a while ago, mainly because the picture made it look oh so tasty.  Now, seeing how it's November I had to use store bought tomatoes.  Even if it was gardening season, I live in military housing with a tiny backyard that gets NO sun. None.  There was a family that lived across the court yard that grew corn in their back yard our first summer here. I hated them. They got the stink eye every time I went in my super shaded can't even grow grass back yard. Okay, enough about the crap hand of a backyard we were dealt.  This recipe would be even better if I did have a garden though..because I wouldn't have had to buy ANYTHING for it.

Here is the original Pin

See!? Yum Yum!!

Now, I altered the recipe some, not much..but some.

Here is the original recipe from myrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 onion diced
tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
4 medium size heirloom tomatoes (about 2lbs) cored and chopped
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup red wine
3 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano or marjoram Hot cooked pasta
Garnish: fresh oregano leaves
Now. I don't have red wine. I don't drink it, I don't regularly use it to cook with, so I substituted chicken stock.  I think this is a great recipe to use as a starting place for someone to make their own.  We eat clean (mainly, we do cheat sometimes) so if I can make my own anything, I'm going to attempt it!

Here are my ingredients that I used-
1 onion diced
1 tpsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
3 1/2 off the vine tomatoes (they didn't have heirloom at Food Lion when I went, and these suckers were on sale, and fairly large, about the size of beef steak tomatoes), diced
Sea Salt
Pepper
1/4c Chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp Tomato paste
Pinch sugar
Dried oregano, marjoram, and Italian seasoning
Cayenne Pepper
Cooked Pasta
Shredded Mozzarella

Now. The original recipe says to use a dutch oven. I don't have one. BUT I do have my super awesome deep oval shaped Rachel Ray pan.  NOTHING sticks to this beast so it's my go to when dealing with tomatoes/tomato sauce recipes.

Heat oil in pan, and add your onions, let them cook for around 3 or so minutes-basically until they're soft.  Throw in the garlic and stir it up, let that cook for about another minute or so.  Then add your diced tomatoes and mix it all up.  Let that cook until the juices start coming out of the tomatoes.  Around this time the original recipe said to add your pepper and salt to taste, but I don't like adding seasoning until the end, so I'll know what the finished product will taste like, but feel free to season with salt and pepper to taste now if you'd like.  Once the tomatoes start releasing the juices add your chicken stock (or red wine) and stir in the tomato paste.  Let that simmer and thicken up a bit ( it shouldn't take too long).  Now add your pinch or two of sugar, and your seasonings to taste.  Feel free to omit the cayenne, I like my sauce to have a little bit of a bite to it.  Once you have it tasting delicious I let mine simmer on low until my noodles were done.  The mozzarella isn't really needed. but my kids like a sprinkle of cheese on their pasta, and a sprinkle of mozzarella never hurts anything in my opinion. 

Please excuse the poor lighting in my kitchen.

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