Roasted Tomato and Garlic Pasta Sauce (Marinara sauce/Spaghetti sauce)

This past week may have just been the busiest one in my entire life (no kidding), as far back as I can remember. With so many seemingly urgent things on my plate I was almost completely overwhelmed, especially with my husband going off on his first long MBA residency for a whole week. I literally had to keep the midnight oil burning and getting up early at 5 AM for that whole week. All this coupled with the added pressures of a new job was zapping away whatever energy I had left by 4 pm, leaving me just brain dead and almost non-functional. But then I pick up my daughter from daycare and seeing her mojo after a well rested 2 hour afternoon nap, definitely helps to push myself on for a few more miles before I can call it a day, well actually I had no choice.

We were having guests over for the weekend and so I planned to call some cleaners to get my house spruced up. Believe it or not, the very first day of the week when my husband was out of town, I had a broken toilet flush, a computer crash, my daughter's ballet recital video that I recorded on my cell phone get corrupted, my cell phone dies on me and the cleaners cancelled their visit at the last minute!! When my husband called me for the usual end-of-day status check, I was literally running around like a chicken with her head cut-off and almost broke down in tears. Well it took some coaxing from my husband to convince me that it was actually not the end of the world – LOL!

Roasted Tomatoes

Well, definitely such fast paced lives with long hours of work and unending to-do lists demand some super easy recipes that can freeze well. I therefore make time during the weekend to prepare some pasta sauce, which will help me during the following week. So all I would need is to boil some pasta, add a few mix-ins, sprinkle some cheese and Voila!! a homemade dinner would be ready in a jiffy!

Makes Approx 4 Cups

Ingredients
5Lb – Roma Tomato, thickly sliced
2 - Onions, chopped
2 whole pods - Garlic
1 tsp – Italian herbs blend or Oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 425F
• Cut the whole garlic pod into halves
• Arrange the thickly sliced tomatoes and garlic pods on a baking tray.
• Brush the tomato pieces and garlic with oil or use an oil spray
• Sprinkle with salt and pepper
• Bake for 1-1 ½ hours
• While the tomatoes are baking, heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a pan and add chopped onions. Sauté until golden brown and take off the heat
• After the tomatoes and onions cool, transfer into a blender and blend until smooth.
• Season with more salt & pepper to taste and enjoy with your favorite pasta

Notes and Tips

• You can add more herbs to the sauce. I like to keep mine simple
• I used dried herbs for the sauce
• You can experiment with your favorite herbs
• Transfer the pasta sauce into small sterilized glass jars and freeze it once the sauce is cooled