You all know by now, how much I love pasta. I love tomatoes too…..especially homemade ones (home grown). So when you are given fresh tomatoes, you just gotta make a good marinara sauce. It’s so easy and so delicious. I’ve been to a few good Italian restaurants, where they serve hot Italian bread with little bowls of marinara sauce for dipping. When I take that first bite, I die….seriously. So good. Well,  I wanted to make my own dipping sauce! But of course, I couldn’t resist pouring some over spaghetti as well.

Now, this would work with canned whole tomatoes too. But I am telling you all…..the fresh tomatoes…fresh garlic…..fresh, fresh, fresh. So, go to your garden now and pick some tomatoes. If you don’t have a garden, sneak into your neighbors garden and borrow some of their tomatoes. 🙂

Marinara Sauce with Fresh Tomatoes

5 or 6 medium sized fresh tomatoes, chopped in quarters
3 cloves of fresh garlic, roughly chopped
6 leafs of fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried oregano
leaves of 3 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme
4 leafs of fresh basil or 1 tsp dried basil
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or 1 fresh jalapeno
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Dump everything into a big pot, on medium low heat. Give it a good stir and cover for about 15 minutes. give it another stir and continue to cook until everything gets really soft and the peels of the tomatoes start to come off. With a fork, pick out the tomato skins and discard. Turn the heat to low. At this point, I use an emersion blender (hand blender) and carefully start blending till smooth. If you don’t have an emersion blender, put everything into a blender or food processor and blitz until you have a nice smooth texture. Dump the sauce back into your pot on the stove and continue to cook on low for another 15 – 20 minutes. Ready to eat, but it’s even better the next day.

Things to do with your marinara sauce:

– dipping sauce for some good Italian bread, or cheese sticks
– pasta sauce
– pizza sauce
– for chicken or eggplant parmesan