Scrumptious Sundays

Scrumptious Sundays...that's our plan for now. We've posted several recipes on the blog and are finding ourselves trying more and more new eats. The trick is remembering to blog about them, and hope that we took pictures of our new creation. Sunday is almost always a guarantee for a new recipe at the Hendricks house. So look for recipe posts on Sundays - we'll try to keep up.

Slow Roasted Tomato Pasta

(We like meat with our pasta so we made homemade meatballs and added it to this recipe.)

Ingredients

• 3 pounds plum tomatoes, cored and halved lengthwise
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 2 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 6 whole peeled garlic cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 12 ounces uncooked fettuccine
• 3/4 cup (3 ounces) shaved fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• 3 tablespoons torn fresh basil

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 225°.

2. Place tomatoes on a jelly-roll pan; sprinkle with 2 tablespoons oil, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and black pepper. Bake for 4 hours.

3. Heat a large skillet over low heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil and garlic; cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove garlic, and chop. Combine garlic, tomatoes, and red pepper in pan.

4. Cook pasta in boiling water with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt for 8 minutes or until almost al dente. Drain pasta, reserving 3/4 cup cooking liquid. Increase heat to medium-high under tomato mixture, and stir in reserved cooking liquid. Bring to a boil. Cook 3 minutes. Add pasta; cook for 1 minute, tossing to combine. Remove from heat; sprinkle with cheese and basil.

*Side note* (& possibly our new favorite thing)

During Barb's travels she ran across a restaurant offering the ultimate healthy choice for pasta. Sure we've all seen whole wheat options on the menu, but The Bistro of Green takes healthy to a whole new level!! Yes they do offer whole wheat linguini but they also offer your dish to be served over spinach or zucchini & squash ribbons. Wasn't sure about the 'ribbons' but gave it a try because squash & zucchini seemed safe. They slice the vegetables as close to the shape of a noodle as they can. I had the Southwest Chicken dish and would never have known it was over veggies instead of pasta. So...I couldn't wait to try it when I got home. We used this Slow-Roasted Tomato recipe as our guinea pig. It was awesome and delicious! We sliced the zucchini and squash using a mandoline and steamed them long enough until they were soft and seemed to have the texture of noodles. All we can say is AWESOME!