Caramelized Cherry Tomato Sauce with Pasta

There are as many tomato sauce recipes as there are nonnas. Some are quick sauces you can whip up on a weeknight, others cook for hours on end. Some use canned tomatoes and others scoff at you if you even suggest using something other than something fresh from the garden. For years we have enjoyed our quick 20 minute tomato sauce (which uses a can of crushed tomatoes if you were wondering). It’s good, simple and does the trick. We all need meals like this in our arsenal. quick dinners that you can mindlessly throw together and always have the ingredients stocked in your pantry. I never really planned on trying a new sauce or updating what already works.

The other day though, I was making a roasted salmon dish from Mark Bittman’s book Dinner For Everyone. (I’m in love with this cookbook, you should definitely check it out.) In this recipe he roasts salmon in the oven with butter and tomatoes. The salmon was good but the tomatoes and resulting sauce were out of this world. It was so good that I immediately started plotting to have those juicy little tomatoes in my life more often. 

Enter Caramelized Cherry Tomato Sauce. This sauce is amazing, I love it so much. It has a similar flavor profile to puttenesca but is much more subtle. The sauce is rich without being heavy and also tastes bright and refreshing thanks to the last minute addition of lemon juice and basil. It can easily read as a summer or winter dish. Which is a plus in my book.

If you looked at this recipe, saw anchovies and promptly said “nope!” Hear me out. Anchovies are such a powerhouse ingredient. They are distinctly salty and pungent but when minced and stirred into a pasta sauce or dressing, their flavor profile softens, and they add a deeply savory quality that amplifies the flavor of the other ingredients without making the dish taste fishy. Capers, another key ingredient, are little, salty, briny bombs of flavor that you just can’t do without. Both of these ingredients deserve a place in your pantry. So since the capers, anchovies and garlic simmer in the sauce for so long they really mellow out and make the sauce the wonder that it is. 

Lately I’ve preferred to leave my garlic in larger chunks instead of mincing it. If Garlic is cooked long enough its sharpness is replaced with a slight caramelized sweetness that I just go crazy over. Now on to the browned butter. I can’t believe it took me five paragraphs to talk about this crucial component but really, do I need to extoll the virtues of browned butter? I don’t think so. Those two words speak for themselves.

If you want to cook this in the oven, which I recommend, simply warm the skillet on the stove and once you have all the ingredients in, place it in the oven at 450 degrees and roast for about 15 minutes.

Yield: 3-4

Author: Laura Gable

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Caramelized Cherry Tomato Sauce with Pasta

Prep time: 5 MCook time: 20 MTotal time: 25 M

Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 5-6 anchovies, chopped into small pieces
• 2 tablespoons capers
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced thin
• 3-4 sprigs of thyme
• salt and pepper
• 2 pints of cherry tomatoes (Roughly 1.5 lbs)
• 12 ounces of spaghetti
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup of fresh basil leaves

Instructions:

1. heat a cast iron or non-stick skillet over medium-high heat and add the butter. Once the butter is sizzling and starting to brown add the anchovies, capers, garlic, thyme sprigs, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper. Stir that around then toss in the tomatoes. As the tomatoes cook stir them occasionally to coat them in the butter sauce. Let that simmer till the tomatoes start to burst and a creamy, caramelized sauce appears in the bottom of the skillet, 12-15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile bring a large pot of water to a boil. Generously salt the water and add your pasta. Cook for 8-10 minutes, scoop out a cup of the cooking water then drain the pasta and return to the pot.
3. Pick out the thyme springs and toss the tomato sauce with the pasta, adding some of the cooking water to loosen up the pasta and create a more creamy sauce. Add the lemon juice and more salt if needed and serve with a drizzle of olive oil and the chopped basil.

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