Best Raw Sauce

This is the month to enjoy fresh and easy pasta sauces! This one is a tad messy to make, but well worth the effort.  Make this sauce with fully ripe tomatoes and marinate for one to four hours at room temperature.  It is a wet but chunky sauce, best with angel hair or other thin pasta shapes.  The sauce here was made with big chunky paste tomatoes, but use whatever you have in the garden, or from the farmer's market.  If you do have to shop for your tomatoes, remember never to refrigerate them; their flavor vanishes in the cold.

Here's what you need to make the sauce:

3 - 4 Tbsp. olive oil
2 - 3 tsp. ume or balsamic vinegar
2 -3 lbs. ripe, fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped
one small onion
one clove garlic
salt and freshly ground pepper
fresh basil for garnish

To peel and seed the tomatoes, parboil them for 45 seconds and then place them on a cutting board to cool.  (A cutting board with a trough for catching jiuces is really a necessity here.)

While the tomatoes are cooling, mince the onion and garlic and put them in a lovely ceramic dish with a cover that you have purchased from a local artisan.

Here's the fun part, especially if you were never allowed to get dirty or messy as a kid.  Locate yourself over or right next to your compost bucket.  Pick up a tomato and with a paring knife cut out the stem and green shoulder area.  You will find that the skin now slips off easily and can be discarded.

 Now cut the tomato into quarters, hold it over the compost bucket, and slide your finger down the length of the tomato to remove the seeds and liquid.  Return the tomato to the cutting board and chop into chunks.

Scoop up the chunks and add them to the lovely handmade dish.  Notice that most of the tomato liquid has been left behind, either in the compost bucket or on the cutting board.  (To minimize your mess, think this step through for the equipment you have available.)

Add oil and vinegar, salt and pepper.  Stir well to mix all ingredients.  Cover sauce and allow to marinate for one to four hours at room temperature.  This is a delicate sauce, so you will need more per pound of pasta than you would need of a thick, cooked down sauce.  About three cups per pound is fine.

This recipe adapted from Harrowsmith Country Life magazine.