Pasta with Italian Tomato Sauce

Today, a very quick vegetarian post. Quick, because I realised this hadn’t appeared here yet. And it’s a classic, after all. Or so I think, at least. Super simple, meat-free. Practically just tomatoes and basil.

With a hint of Parmesan, garlic and black pepper. Slightly sweet, like real Italian tomatoes.

And quick, lest I forget, because I haven’t got time 😉 So enough talking, let’s get to work. Recommended!

Recipe at a glance:

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Serves: one (a large portion, or two people), but you can always make more sauce

Calories: don’t ask, eat

Ingredients for pasta with tomato and basil sauce:

• 350 ml crushed tomatoes (Italian, plain, with nothing added, shop-bought in a 700 ml bottle, so you need half a bottle)
• a piece of Parmesan (about 1 cm by 4 cm, a small piece; Grana Padano is fine too)
• 3 shallots
• 3 cloves garlic
• 20 fresh basil leaves
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• olive oil
• freshly ground black pepper
• sweet dried red paprika
• salt
• pasta (I chose pipe rigate, Italian shells)

Recipe for Italian vegetarian pasta shells:

I sliced the shallots into thin rounds. I heated olive oil in a deep frying pan and fried the shallots, adding 1 teaspoon of sugar. The shallots should turn translucent. Then I added the crushed tomatoes and stirred. I also added a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, half a teaspoon of sweet dried paprika and a generous amount of pepper (freshly ground and black, of course). I stirred.

I crushed the garlic and cut it into thin slices. I added it to the sauce and stirred. I turned down the „heat” under the pan (on my induction hob, from 6 to 4 on a scale of 1 – 10) and cooked, stirring occasionally, until the sauce had thickened nicely (you can see it in the photo, I hope).

While the sauce was reducing, I cooked the pipe rigate, those Italian pasta shells. I drained them and rinsed them with cold water.

I cut the Parmesan into thin slivers and added it to the sauce (you can see it in the photo), stirred and cooked briefly. I added the pasta, mixed thoroughly again, added a little more freshly ground pepper and took the pan off the „heat”.

I cut the basil into strips and added it to the pan. Stirred. Done. Enjoy!