A Recipe For A Simple And Healthy Pasta Sauce

Not all of us have the privilege of being Italian. It seems every Italian has the secret to making a tasty tomato sauce. Being one myself, of course I have several sauces up my sleeve. But not everyone has time to spend on a sauce that takes hours to prepare.

While that rich smelling flavorful sauce is simmering away on the stove for hours, the aroma fills the house and fills the people in it with gnawing hunger. When you are hungry, why wait hours for a sauce when you can get the real thing in under 30 minutes. I am going to tell you how.

To make this tasty pasta sauce all you need is four basic ingredients:

- 1 bunch of cherry tomatoes

- 1 small yellow onion

- 1 clove garlic

- 2-3 TBSP olive oil

Start by heating a medium-sized skillet over medium heat. Drizzle the pan with olive oil and turn the pan about to evenly coat the bottom. Turn down the heat under the skillet a bit. While the olive oil is slowly heating, cut up your vegetables.

Put your cherry tomatoes on a cutting board and quarter them. Be careful to save as much of the juice and seeds as you can; these add welcome flavor, nutrients and consistency to the sauce.

Dice up the onion. Now your olive oil should be the right temperature to add the tomatoes and onions. Be sure the pan is not so hot that it burns the onions.

You want to look for the largest garlic clove you have around. If you don't happen to have any garlic, sprinkle a bit of garlic powder in the sauce. It won't be as good, but it will do. If you do have garlic, put it on a cutting board and with the flat side of a knife, carefully smash the garlic clove. Dice the crushed garlic finely and add to the sauce.

You may add a variety of vegetables to the sauce if you have them. Good ones are Zucchini, many kinds of squash, olives, bell peppers - all add a dimension of flavor and more nutrients and texture to the sauce. Add pepperoncini if you like it hot. For a milder flavored sauce, you can add a few pinches of crushed red pepper flakes.

Mix up all the vegetables in the skillet by giving them a good stir. You want a good coating of olive oil on them so they cook correctly. Now put a lid on the skillet. You have arrived at the waiting period. Every couple of minutes, check on the sauce and give it a stir.

The tomatoes should be wilted after only a couple minutes as the juice seeps out of them. By 10 minutes, the onions should be translucent and the tomatoes should have lost their form completely. Always remember to put the lid back on the frying pan after stirring. The condensation in the frying pan will keep the tomato juices from burning off.

When the onions are tender and the sauce is beginning to resemble the pasta sauces you know and love, take the lid off the pan. Simmer uncovered on medium heat for a few minutes to heat it all up and thicken any watery parts. Please, please never add water to tomato sauce. What you want is to reduce liquid thereby thickening the sauce.

Boil up your favorite pasta in a large pan filled with rapidly boiling salted water and ready yourself to dine. Top off your plate of pasta and sauce with some parmesan cheese and tuck a couple of slices of garlic bread into the creation on your plate. You are now an unofficial Italian and will never, never buy a jar of that red stuff again to top your pasta. And congratulations for making yourself a much healthier, fresher, tastier, Italianer sauce than that jar ever held.