Intensely Tomato Pasta!

Well, it has been a busy few days, I had not really been feeling too good the last couple of days.

Deepta's dance classes and her upcoming performance is begining to take a life of its own - make that, take my life of its own! Between practices, dressing and calming down the younger one's esteem issue's to make it fit, it has been quite a project! I actually had quite a dinner success yesterday!

There had been this recipe that I had been mentally bookmarking. My kids love tomatoes, so I knew this one was a possibility. I did know that it would not work in its undercooked form form for the mini food critiques. I also had dry sun-dried tomatoes, and not ones packed in oil. So here is how I made the tripple tomato base, which I made a double recipe of and added cilantro, since I cannot live without it!

Tripple Tomato Base

Makes 2 cups

Ingredients

4 stem-ripened fresh tomatoes

8 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup soaked sun-dried tomatoes

10 basil leaves

1/2 cup fresh cilantro

1 teaspoon salt

Pasta

8 oz dried rigatoni

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon sugar

3/4 cup whole or 2 percent milk

Method of Preparation

1. Coarsely chop the tomatoes and place in a blender with the tomato paste and blend into a puree.

2. Add the sun-dried tomatoes with about 2-3 tablespoons of the soaking liquid and the basil and cilantro and salt and blend into a thick dense puree.

3. Cook the pasta (I used rigatonni) according to directions and set aside.

4. Heat the oil and pasta and add about 3/4 cup of the prepared paste.

5. Add in the sugar and the milk and cook for 5 minutes.

6. Mix in the pasta and cook for 1-2 minutes.

Kids loved it! Thanks Dara!

Now some weekends you get really lucky with the food!
Twitter is something I am still trying

to make sense of, anyhow I chanced on this random tweet @small bites, by none other that Liz herself. I have been making soft boiled eggs most days since she started school (last year) for breakfast, this weekend I tried the 8 minutes of cooking followed by the ice water dunking, I then had to peek inside the edd to see if it worked - sure enough perfect yolk!. I told Deepta that these were crater egg and topped it with some cheese to help her get over the shock of her broken egg.

Here's to a lovely week!