Can you imagine making a delicious sauce base with fresh ingredients AND having it work with multiple dishes? This works phenomenally with pasta, pizza, and bread. You can build on the sauce base and elevate the plate with a bunch of beautiful garden flavors! Not only do I get to share the base with you, but I also will show you what we did with Mafaldine! Be on the lookout for my Summer Vegetable Mafaldine recipe!
As is, you can easily use this to dress up pasta. You can use this as a pizza base. This also works extremely well with fresh garlic bread. Dress up a batch of freshly cooked rice or pearl couscous. Seriously speaking, the ideas are endless! The best part about this base is that not only are we working with easy-to-find ingredients, but you are going to want more of this. You may want to make a double batch!
This recipe will make enough sauce base for two plates of pasta and a 14" pizza. You will need a scale for this recipe
INGREDIENTS: 2-28oz cans of Whole stewed tomatoes, drained well, torn into strips
2oz Cabernet Sauvignon 1/4 C Olive oil
2oz Parmigiano-Reggiano*, fresh shaved
Kosher Salt, to taste Black Pepper, to taste
***
IN A HIGH POWERED BLENDER:
3oz Shallots, sliced thin
1-2oz Garlic, rough chopped 4 Scallions, rough chopped 8 Basil leaves (large) 1/2oz Parsley, leaves and stems 1/3 C Olive oil
2 pinches Oregano, dried 2 pinches Granulated Onion
Kosher Salt, to taste Black Pepper, to taste
1.) In a mixing bowl lined with a fine-mesh strainer, empty the contents of your whole stewed tomatoes. Drain all of the fluids and transfer to a storage container. 2.) Begin to tear the stewed tomatoes into strips or small bite-sized pieces. Do not discard anything. 3.) Gently press the tomato strips to release the rest of their juice. Transfer remaining juice from the bowl into your storage container. Let the tomatoes sit in the fine-mesh strainer inside the bowl for about 10-15 to let the remaining fluids drain. Transfer the remaining juice from the bowl to your storage container. The tomato juice can be used for sauce making, Bloody Mary-making, or BBQ sauce making. You can also drink this, if you like.
4.) Transfer the tomato strips into your bowl from the strainer. Add your wine, olive oil, kosher salt, black pepper, and cheese to the tomatoes. Mix this well and set this aside. 5.) Into a high-powered blender, add the remaining ingredients. Blitz this until it becomes liquidized. It will produce a bold and bright green color.
6.) Take half of your pesto fluid and mix into your bowl of stewed tomatoes. Mix well. 7.) Empty the remaining pesto fluid contents into your stewed tomatoes, and mix well again. This will help make sure everything has been thoroughly combined.
*To make this vegan, use nutritional yeast instead of the cheese. Make sure you run this through a blender or spice grinder to blitz this into a fine powder. Start with one tablespoon, mix well, and taste-test it before adding more.
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