As the days of summer wane, we are eating fresh tomatoes every chance we get. Our raised bed plot in the backyard has been slow to produce tomatoes, but we have been fortunate to enjoy beauties from our daughter’s abundant garden and others from the farmers market.
This pasta sauce recipe showcases ripe tomatoes and requires very little prep work. In fact, you work for about 10 minutes and then the sauce does the rest of the magic on its own. 
There’s no skinning the tomatoes, no seeding the tomatoes—only a bit of chopping and stirring. The total cooking time involved for the sauce is three whole minutes—enough to allow warmed olive oil to coax raw garlic into a lovely mild flavor base. To the garlic and oil, you add raw chopped tomatoes, some red wine vinegar, chopped basil, and some salt and pepper.
This happy, bright mixture sits at room temperature for up to 6 hours, allowing the juices from the tomatoes to gather and become flavored more fully with the seasonings.
I almost wrote in the recipe directions, “After placing bowl of sauce on countertop, read a few chapters of the book you’ve been meaning to get to. Then when dinnertime comes, put down the book and heat up some water to cook the pasta.”
Seeing the photograph of “Linguine with Fresh Tomato Sauce” on the cover of the September 1986 issue of Bon Appétit, I knew I had a date with destiny (and it was only 29 years in the making). The recipe appeared in David Rosengarten’s article entitled, “Easy Italian Menus.” The only change I made to Rosengarten’s directions was to hold some basil leaves back from the initial sauce in order to chop and add them to the pasta right before serving.
This recipe makes a late summer dinner that requires little effort to prepare. You simply toss the waiting sauce with hot linguine noodles and sprinkle servings with freshly grated Parmesan. As Rosengarten writes, “It is a marvelous dish that could not be easier.”
Linguine with Fresh Tomato Sauce
Sunnyside Cook
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil (divided—see below)
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 1/2 pounds very ripe tomatoes coarsely chopped, with liquid reserved
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
- 1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- 1/2 pound linguine
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a small skillet over medium low heat. Add the chopped garlic and cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Do not brown the garlic.
- Transfer the garlic and oil to a medium size non-aluminum bowl and mix in tomatoes, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 3 tablespoons chopped basil, red wine vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently.
- Allow tomato mixture to sit at room temperature for 6 hours.
- Cook linguine in boiling salted water according to package directions. Drain well and transfer to serving bowl. Toss with 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Add tomato sauce and additional tablespoon of chopped fresh basil and toss to combine with noodles.
- Offer grated Parmesan cheese at the table for topping.
Will try it this week. Love all of these you have been posting.