A few weeks ago, I challenged myself to cook a dish for six of my friends. I wanted to make something simple (I’m quite the novice in the kitchen), comforting, and delicious, and of course, I landed on pasta with tomato sauce. Requiring very few ingredients and very little time, this rigatoni with cheesy homemade cherry tomato sauce has become a staple in my college apartment of four hungry ladies.
Here’s what you’ll need…
Extra virgin olive oil
Cherry tomatoes
Onion
Garlic
Salt (duh) & pepper
Fresh mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
Rigatoni shells
And here’s how it’s done, in 10 simple steps…
1. Prep
Dice up your onion and garlic (separately) into small pieces. Then chop your mozzarella into one-inch cubes. Set the chopped mozzarella aside in its own bowl, massage some olive oil, salt, and pepper into it, and put it in the fridge to maintain freshness. *Pro-tip: if your mozzarella is more hard and rubbery than the desired soft and squishy, place it in some hot, salted water for about five minutes before chopping it up.
2. Pour your olive oil into a large pan, on the stovetop with low heat
Cover the bottom later of the pain with about ¾ of an inch of olive oil, and salt & pepper it immediately.
3. Add in your cherry tomatoes and chopped onion
No need to slice the tomatoes, I added mine straight from the box! In terms of onion to tomato ratio, the mix should look like a sea of cherry tomatoes with a sprinkle of onion. To elaborate on that metaphor, the tomatoes should be the sea’s water and the onions its white wave ripples.
4. Salt, pepper, cover, and wait
Add some more salt and pepper to your tomato-onion mixture. Keep it on that same relatively low heat (this is crucial), cover it with a top, and wait about 10 minutes.
5. Get the pasta going
On a separate stovetop, start boiling your pasta water (salted of course, and with a bit of olive oil).
6. Check back in on your sauce, and add in your garlic
Do this when your pasta water is close to a boil. The garlic gets added in at this point, rather than with the tomatoes and onions because it takes less time to cook. At this point, if your tomatoes look sufficiently soft and your onions sufficiently golden, feel free to smush down some of the tomatoes, watch the juice come out, and mix it all around.
7. Once your water is at a boil, add in your pasta!
While your pasta cooks, keep your sauce on low heat and keep mixing it around and watching the juicy cherry tomatoes burst.
8. Remove your pasta from the stovetop and strain it before it’s fully cooked
Undercooking your pasta (at first) is a key step. If the box’s recommended cooking time is 8 minutes, only cook it for 7. Take out one shell and taste it to assess its state of softness. It should be heavily al dente at this point.
9. Combine!
Once you’ve strained your pasta and your sauce looks adequately saucy (it’s not going to look like a creamy Rao’s vodka sauce of course, but like a stew of sorts), add your undercooked pasta into the pan of sauce. Turn up the heat just a bit and mix it all around (for about 2-3 minutes) so that the pasta can cook some more in the sauce and absorb some of the sauce’s flavor. At this point feel free to also add a little more salt and pepper.
10. Make it cheesy
First, turn off the burner under your mixture. Then, add in your sliced mozzarella cubes. Let them sit on top of the saucy pasta for about a minute. The residual heat will melt the cheese. Then, mix it all together and watch your cheese melt into a stringy goodness.
Now it’s time to serve!
If you’re a cheesy gal like me, serve your dish with a parmesan sprinkle on top.
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And there you have it: you just made an amazing pasta sauce out of tomatoes and olive oil. The key, I think, is patience with the low heat. This creates a slow-cooking environment (not that slow, given that the whole thing takes about 30 minutes from prep to serving) where the flavors can really flourish. The freshness (and of course, the cheesiness) of this delicious dish will not disappoint.