Baked Pasta With Spinach

Our neighbor came over last night with a giant bag of cherry tomatoes from her garden. I had two large slicing tomatoes on the window sill that needed to be used. The basil on the patio was starting to see it's final days and I told David that I would use it up this weekend so we could get rid of the plants. I had a half an onion in the fridge from another night's dinner.  So, dinner for tonight seemed fairly obvious: Pasta.

 

I wanted to try something a little different so this morning before work in a pot I added:

• All the cherry tomatoes from the large Ziploc bag, cut in half
• 2 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1/2 a large white onion, roughly chopped
• A few cloves of garlic
• Salt and pepper
• Lots of balsamic vinegar
• A pinch of sugar
• A few drizzles of olive oil
• 3 giant handfuls of basil, roughly chopped (maybe more, I stripped the plants bare)
• Red pepper flakes
• About a 1/4 cup of water just to get it all going (I was out of stock or I would have used that) 

I cooked it on the stove until everything got soft and the tomatoes starting releasing their juices.  Then I put it batch by batch in the blender until it was almost like a tomato water consistency.  I let it simmer a little while on the stovetop.

 

I  poured 1/2 a package of dried pasta into that mixture and cooked the pasta for 6 minutes (a little under done) in that tomato mixture instead of boiling water. I dumped  all of it into a container and put it in the fridge.  I usually like pasta better the next day after it has absorbed a lot of the liquid, so I thought this would allow the pasta to soak up even more flavor and the starch would make the sauce a thicker, but leave it thin enough that I could bake it when I got home without it drying out.

 

After work I added the pasta, a package of frozen chopped spinach (thawed) and some grated mozzarella cheese into a baking dish and covered it with foil to heat it through at 350.

David came home with another bag of tomatoes from the farmer's market, so I chopped up two of the biggest tomatoes and put them in a pot with garlic, balsamic, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and big tablespoon of basil oil.  I cooked it down while I was waiting on the pasta to heat through and served it over top. 

It could not have been easier! Fresh sauce, completely vegetarian, inexpensive and really delicious. It doesn't get any better than that for a Friday night dinner.