Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Best pasta



Right it's time to put on some photo's if I want people to actually read this blog! so here goes....

Well, it's not quite where I had planned it to be but it's there so it's a start!

This is on our local mountain, Mt Taranaki (or Egmont as it says on the map, but i've never heard a local call it that since I moved here 6 years ago!).  Anyway this is on a tramping trip on Waitangi weekend in February.  It was around 3 hours to this hut.  So anyway, after such a long (mostly uphill) walk we needed food. Pasta.  I grow my own delicious heirloom tomatoes in summer and preserve whatever we don't eat for later in the year - I refuse to buy a tomato or tomato sauce for that matter!  Anyway, along with sauce I also make loads of pasta sauce to bottle, plain chopped tomatos, relish and freeze some for later.  



On this trip I took a jar of pasta sauce, cooked up some pasta and lentils, mixed them all together and dinner was served.  Haha it's great how good things taste out in the fresh air when you've really earned them!

Pasta sauce
1.  Chop an onion and a carrot finely and saute in oil over very low heat until soft.  Add 2 cloves of chopped or crushed garlic and cook for a minute more.
2.  Add chopped tomatoes - a can if that's all you have or maybe 6 - 10 fresh ones depending on size, along with 1 tsp brown sugar, a splash of balsamic vinegar (add a little extra if preserving the tomatoes as this will stop the top exploding!)., a sprinkle of dried herbs (one or more of basil, oregano, majoram, thyme or mixed herbs) and 1-2 T tomato paste.
3.  Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until the mixture thickens slightly - around 20 minutes.
4.  Use as is or with lenitls, tuna etc added, bottle or cool and freeze.

Enjoy, i'm off to practise some food photography!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your pasta sauce sounds awesome! I really wish I was able to have a garden to grow my own veggies...

I'm so jealous that you are in NZ! I've been there twice as a stopover after getting back from the Ice, though I only toured around and hiked around on the South Island....I seriously ate some of the best food of my life in NZ. You are SO lucky to have so much awesome fresh food available - and decent beer! Back in the day (when it was still ok to bring liquids) I actually packed my entire carry on luggage w/ Monteiths because there is no way to buy it in the States....haha.

Glad you stopped by my blog, Cheers!

Mermaid said...

Haha! Yeah, Monteiths is good, I like their Radler - spicy and light, mmmmm. It's great to hear we have good food - guess you take it for granted when you live somewhere!

Anonymous said...

oh, this sounds really easy, light, healthy, and delish! And it is open to my own twists on this, too!

Sarah S. said...

Yum! I've never made my own tomato sauce (shame on me!)

This definitely sounds doable!! Thanks for sharing