Healthy, Gorgeous, Raw Tomato Sauce

I thought about calling this: Amazingly Simple and Delicious, Garlic Infused, Basil Tainted, Healthy, Fresh, Whip This Together And Feel Good About What You’re Eating over Zucchini Noodles Topped with Goat Cheese.     Sauce.

That didn’t exactly fit on the line.

But this will definitely fit into your schedule.

If you are a tomato lover, this bevy of beta-carotenoid, lycopene love will make you very, very happy. Bruschetta in a bowl, minus the bread! Serve this beautiful room temperature sauce over some angel hair pasta or keep it totally on the down low with the carb count and spin out some fun zucchini noodles.

Either way, you’re gonna end up with a big smack of summer right in the face. Which, considering the implications of being smacked….is not a bad thing at all.

Look at these beauties. Obviously you’ll want to get your hands on the best fresh tomatoes you can find, so check out the farmers’ markets in your area! You’ll also be needing some fresh basil, a clove or two of garlic (all easy enough to procure) and some olive oil. Salt? Pepper?

Yeah seriously, these are basically the ingredients!

Get out your sharpest knife and cut your tomatoes into a very small dice. To anyone who is feeling a little lax in their knife skills and is thinking – oh no – I promise, this is much easier than it looks. Begin by cutting the tomato into thick slices (like you would put on a hamburger) and then stack them and cut them lengthwise, and then width-wise. Boom. Boom. Now if you have a crummy dull knife, all bets are off. SO invest in just one great knife, or maybe sharpen the one you have. Easy peasy.

Go ahead and strain off some of the water that’s bound to accumulate as you are chopping away. Don’t worry about this too much, tomatoes are a juicy fruit and that’s just the way it is. They will continue to release water as you go along, and that is actually a good thing in the final product; so just do this once, okay?

Chop up some of that beautiful basil and grate down a clove of garlic…

And into a bowl it all goes with those tantalizing tomatoes.  Top this with a healthy dose of kosher salt, some freshly cracked black pepper, and a couple of glugs (roughly a teaspoon per tomato) of olive oil. Give it a quick mix to get everything incorporated nicely.

Cover this up with some plastic wrap and set it off to the side. DO NOT put it in the refrigerator…..you want the flavors you’ve got going to get all nicely acquainted without anybody getting cold feet. Just put it out of the way and make some room to set up your spiralizer;

you’re about to play….

spin the zucchini.

I am not going to lie when I tell you that the first time I attempted to use this nifty little gadget I could not figure it out to save my life! I mean, how hard can it be? Shove a piece of whatever into a moving blade and it magically spits out strands of confetti colored low carb ribbons, right? That was what I had envisioned and although the end result is exactly what I just described, the mechanics are slightly different (you spin the veg, not the blade) than what your brain would find logical (or at least my brain). So, if you can’t make heads or tails of your spiralizer; please know you are not alone. Then go check out this video, here.

Or for the love of your mother just boil up some water and make some angel hair pasta (not as healthy but just as delish).

Aren’t they pretty?  Now all you have to do with these emerald colored curly-que’s is toss them into a hot pan with a tiny dribble of olive oil, and give them a quick sauté, maybe five minutes or so. Make sure to give ’em a sprinkle of salt as you go, and then…..

they are going to serve as your “pasta” to this gorgeous “sauce”. See how it gets juicier as it sits there? That’s the idea, baby. Oh…….yum.

Plop some of those zoodles (or cooked pasta) down into a bowl. Schloop over a nice big portion of that fragrant, acidic, juicy sauce and then –  to take it straight to the top, crumble some creamy goat cheese over the whole pile. That soft and luscious cheese will meld in with the tomatoes and the juice they created for you, and everything will just be all zingy, creamy, garlic-y goodness.

And who couldn’t benefit from a little zing?          Just remember:

RECIPE BELOW: This will take you twenty minutes to put together….tops. It’s nice if you can assemble the sauce an hour or even more ahead of time to give the tomatoes time to mix and mingle with the garlic and basil. Quantities depend on how many people want to eat, and the size of your produce. A good rule of thumb is to plan on two medium tomatoes per serving, and one medium zucchini per serving, but the recipe below is what I made for 2 BIG servings. Make a quickie salad to go with it all (I didn’t even bother but you may find this so easy that you need something else to do). Leftovers here are definitely a beautiful thing.