Fresh Summer Tomato Sauce

October 5, 2025 /

I had planned to make chicken soup for dinner the other night, but then Ted told me he had to work very late and wouldn’t be home. I decided to save the soup for the next night, and make pasta for Maya and myself. I had a few beautiful tomatoes from the farmers’ market, so I decided to make this pasta, which uses uncooked tomatoes. You combine the sauce ingredients early in the day, and let them sit on the counter until you are ready to eat, then you cook your pasta. (Observant readers may notice a phone in the pic above, with Mulder’s picture as my background. That’s my work phone, and I have it there so I can keep my Teams status as green while I do this. I can also watch and see if anything comes in via email, because the entire reason I’m downstairs cooking is that there is a break in the action and I have nothing to do.)

I had most of the ingredients already. The only thing I didn’t have was basil. So I made the sauce, then bought the basil on my lunch break. The only thing I did differently from the recipe is that I didn’t bother to blanch and peel the tomatoes.

Fresh Summer Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

  • 2 large ripe tomatoes (I used one very large and two regular)
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
  • 1/4 cup chopped scallions (green onions – could use shallots if you prefer)
  • 1 tblsp chopped fresh oregano leaves (I omitted)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish
  • 8 oz pasta of your choice

Directions

  1. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil, and blanch the tomatoes in the water for 30 seconds. Then plunge the tomatoes into cold water (to stop the cooking). Drain the tomatoes, and peel them. (I did not do this step. That’s a lot of water wasted just to get the skin off. I could have used the water for plants I suppose, but we had rain in our forcast. Tomato skin doesn’t bother me, so I skipped.)
  2. Remove the cores, and cut the tomatoes into half. Remove as many seeds as possible, and drain off the juices. Dice the tomato pulp.
  3. Combine the diced tomatoes with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a bowl. Add all of the remaining ingredients, except the Parmesan, and toss to blend.
  4. To serve, add the remaining 3 tblsp olive oil and toss with hot pasta. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan.

I took the pictures and started this post, then discovered that I posted this recipe before, back in 2010. The pitfalls of a long term blog, I guess. But none of you have seen it, except perhaps Nance. In that older post, I mention omitting the parsley. My cookbook doesn’t have parsley. This is a newer copy of The New Basics Cookbook (a great all around cookbook with lots of information for new cooks, if you’re ever in search of such a thing), but it doesn’t say it is a new version…the copyright is still 1989. Did I imagine it? In my prior post, I didn’t have the physical cookbook in front of me, I was using Google Books, but the link doesn’t go straight to the recipe anymore. I was curious enough that I went to the link, and scrolled through the pdf to the recipe.

No parsley. I think I was confusing this recipe with another, very similar one, from the Greens Cookbook, that we have quite often. It’s almost the same, but it has cherry tomatoes, parsley, and shallots instead of regular tomatoes, basil, and scallions. And you do cook the sauce, just not much. That’s a lot of blah blah blah, right? Did I just describe blogging?

16 Comments

  • Suzanne

    October 5, 2025 at 5:16 am

    This made me giggle. I have this experience with memories so often. It’s gratifying (and a relief!) when you can figure out where the misremembered bit came from!

    • J

      October 5, 2025 at 7:24 am

      And how pathetic that I have now posted the receipe twice? I’ve done that before, with the story of my first bike. I get the post all ready to go, and then discover I’ve written it before, and then think, oh, what the hell.

  • nance

    October 5, 2025 at 9:15 am

    I make this–or something very similar–all the time and had no idea I was creating a Fresh Summer Tomato Sauce! When I make it, however, I leave the seedy pulp in. I don’t peel the tomatoes, either; what a bother.

    And I hear you so loud and clear about Repeat Blogposting. After twenty years it’s tough not only to remember what you wrote, but also to keep coming up with fresh and relevant material. Still, so many of our readers now are new/newish that maybe our Greatest Hits can bear repeating.

    And for the record, I don’t remember this particular recipe post, per se. And it gave me a wonderful idea for my solo dinner tonight since Rick is at a golf outing.

  • Allison McCaskill

    October 5, 2025 at 9:54 am

    I can’t do raw tomatoes but I am super here for the repeat posting and phantom parsley memory. I am sure that I have repeated stuff in my posts, if not entire posts, but I don’t really worry about it, since if anyone is still here from that time they likely have the same memory issues I do. I also have things that I could swear I posted about and cannot find, so it goes both ways. The blah blah blah of blogging is one of its best features, honestly.

    • J

      October 5, 2025 at 11:30 am

      Sounds pretty similar, and I only let it sit if I think of it early enough in the day. Pesto would be pretty similar, since this has basil.

  • Margaret

    October 5, 2025 at 3:45 pm

    Looking back over old blog posts (to double-check the status of the Typepad to WordPress transfer), I’ve discovered repeat mental meanderings and even title repeats. Ugh! This recipe sounds and looks wonderful; it has everything I like in it! As a cheese lover, I’d probably go overboard on the Parmesan though. 🙂

  • StephLove

    October 6, 2025 at 5:53 am

    I used to make pasta with fresh tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella cubes all the time in the summer, but since my diabetes diagnosis several years ago, if I make pasta it’s a filled pasta (ravioli, tortellini) because the cheese balances out the carbs, but with those pastas, the fresh mozzarella seemes like overkill. And that’s the story of why i never make fresh tomato sauce anymore. Come to think of it, though, I could have put it on ravioli. I just never thought of it.

    • J

      October 6, 2025 at 6:42 am

      Bah, stupid diabetes. My husband can’t eat pasta for the same reason. And he has trouble digesting cow cheese, so unless we make the ravioli from scratch, he can’t really have that either. Which is why we had this meal when he wouldn’t be home.