This recipe for Roasted Cherry Pepper Spaghetti is from Not Another Cooking Show, a YouTube channel featuring loads of delicious pasta recipes. You can view his recipe video here.
We modified the recipe slightly by adding a few San Marzano plum tomatoes so we could stretch the recipe to feed three people.
Our local farm market in September has a bounty of beautiful Jersey tomatoes in every shape and size. Jersey tomatoes are known for their sweet juicy goodness. They are not always pretty on the outside, but the insides are a deep gorgeous red.
Roasting the tomatoes with the garlic and basil makes a creamy, flavorful sauce.
This recipe gives instructions for two servings, but you could easily double the recipe to feed four.
Roasted Cherry Tomato Spaghetti
Roasting the cherry tomatoes in the oven with garlic makes a creamy, rich sauce with lots of flavor.
Ingredients
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 4-5 cloves garlic unpeeled
- few sprigs fresh basil reserve some for garnish
- salt and pepper to taste
- 3 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- A few handfuls parmesan or romano cheese freshly grated
- 1/2 pound spaghetti
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 degree F.
- Put cherry tomatoes in a baking dish. Add the garlic still in its paper. Add a few sprigs of fresh basil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour in the olive oil and toss. Push the basil to the bottom so that it doesn't dry out.
- Put the tomato mixture in the oven for 30 minutes.
- In the meantime, set a pot of water to boil for the pasta.
- Cook pasta about 1-2 minutes less than the package instructions. For example, in this case our spaghetti package instructions said to cook the pasta for 9-11 minutes. We set set a timer for 7 minutes and removed the pasta 2 minutes early. It will continue to cook in the sauce.
- Reserve a cup of the cooking water from the pasta. You’ll need it for the sauce.
- Remove cherry tomatoes from the oven. Remove skins from garlic. Discard the cooked basil.
- Smash the tomato mixture with a potato masher. Be careful, they are hot and they will squirt out at you.
- Transfer the tomato mixture to a large frying pan. Add the cooked pasta. Toss. Add pasta water as needed. Add cheese. Keep cooking for a couple of minutes until everything is blended.
- Garnish with fresh basil.
