Hello!! Last Monday, I promised you some simple, fast and flexible side-dishes so today I wanted to share with you my Speedy Summer Pasta with No-Cook Tomato Sauce. This is one of my favorite summer pasta dishes because it highlights summer’s juicy tomatoes and garden basil.
It is great alone or with cheese and it is also a great base for a variety of other fun dishes.
No-Cook Tomato Sauce Pasta Addition Suggestions
- Add olives, feta and artichokes for a mediterranean inspired twist
- Add corn, black beans and cheddar for a mexican inspired dish
- You could even make it a Meatless Monday meal with a protein based pasta and/or by adding chickpeas and mozzarella and your family’s favorite veggie
- Use your favorite gluten free pasta or sneak some extra veggies in with a veggie based pasta – we love this one!
This is a great dish to include your children in helping and make dinner prep more fun. Enlist your children to help chop the tomatoes – see some quick tomato chopping by John in my recipe! They are normally very excited to help. When they are helping they are distracted from being hungry and it makes dinner prep faster. Additionally, they are working on their fine motor skills and they even more excited to eat it when they have helped make it.
Check out my step by step on how to make it here.
Ingredients
- 1 cup chopped tomatoes I used grape
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 8 oz pasta you can use a gluten free pasta
- Small handful of basil about 10 leaves to marinate and another 10 to chiffon and add in at the end
- 2 tbs parmesan optional
Instructions
- Quarter or chop tomatoes
- Put tomatoes into a medium bowl and add salt, olive oil & basil and let sit for an hour or more for the juices of the tomatoes to run out (see note below)
- Cook pasta according to package instructions
- Drain pasta and let cool for 5 minutes
- Add pasta to tomatoes, olive oil and basil and mix to combine
- Stir in parmesan and extra basil if you desire
Notes
- I do this in the morning or at lunch and let it sit until dinner time – I do this so there is less prep work at dinner time when my kids are hangry 🙂
- This recipe is a great base for a variety of pasta dishes – feel free to add a different cheese, a veggie (zucchini would be yummy), or olives etc……
