Over the weekend my girl Hayley and I had a girls night. We combined our two favorite things, wine and food, and a fun night cooking together while catching up. Hayley is a Naturopathic Doctor, gluten free, and loves to be in the kitchen. We jive. When planning our meal she gave me a list of the veggies she had in fridge and asked me what I could come up “since I’m good at that kind of thing.” Sure enough, this recipe of a fresh tomato sauce on a bed of zoodles and meatballs developed.
I seriously have so much fun cooking and it’s just a pleasure to share it with friends. There are so many different methods to homemade spaghetti sauce and some of them can be pretty labor intensive. I just don’t cook that way. My philosophy is KISS, Keep It Simple Silly 😉 So we cut our tomatoes into halves and fourths, fine chopped our onion, minced the garlic, used the leftover carrot and cauliflower from the meatball recipe (get that recipe here), then gathered the dried herbs.
First I warmed up the pan on medium, then added 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Then I added the tomatoes and cooked those uncovered for about 5 minutes, until they softened up. Then I added the rest of the vegetables and all the herbs. Let it cook for another 5 minutes. The sauce was runny so I added tomato paste to thicken it up. No need for flour of any kind!
While that was cooking Hayley spiralized the zucchini and we placed it in a large pot, covered with water and brought to a boil. Once it was boiling we immediately poured the water and zoodles into a strainer and gently patted with a paper towel.
The sauce came out ah-mazing and I knew I had to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Fresh Tomato Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
- 2 containers grape tomatoes
- 2 sun dried tomatoes sliced thinly
- 4-5 cloves fresh garlic
- 1/2 yellow onion
- 1/4 cup grated carrot
- 1/4 cup grated cauliflower
- 1 tbsp tomoto paste
- 1 tsp dried basil
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp dried rosemary
- 1/8 tsp dried thyme
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
Instructions
- Chop grape tomatoes in half or quarters depending on their size.
- Using a cheese grater or food processor, grate carrots and cauliflower. You want them to be super small pieces.
- Fine chop onion and mince garlic.
- Heat your pan on medium heat. Once hot add evoo and tomatoes. Let cook for one minute then stir. Repeat for 5 minutes, until tomatoes start to soften.
- Add in all other vegetables and spices.
- Cook for another 5 minutes. Stirring regularly to prevent burning.
- Remove from heat and mix in cooked pasta of choice. If desired, top with meatballs and enjoy!
Homemade All Meat Seasoning Blend-Great For All Meats
My husband was just telling me how he wanted to make a robust tomato sauce – this recipe looks great! Thanks! We will be enjoying it! I love your use of zucchini noodles – you rock!
This sounds great! I love that it is healthy, easy, and timely to prepare. When you can get creative and figure out what dishes you can create just by what’s in your fridge, looking in the fridge must always be exciting. Thanks for sharing!
This recipe has already been printed! It looks absolutely delicious! I absolutely love spiralized zucchini and have been looking for new sauce recipes. I can totally relate with not wanting to spend hours making a sauce. I was just telling my husband Monday that I wanted to make meatballs more often so this entire recipe is coming at just the right time! Thank you!
Marian – just love your recipes. I have a naturopathic doc friend too! She is an amazing cook. Her pesto is the most incredible I have ever tasted. The sauce above sounds like it tasted really fresh, and light. That’s how I like my pasta sauce. Hope it was yummy and that you enjoyed dinner.
First of all…thank you for making it easy to print!! Definitely adding the to the list. Something about noodles and sauce that makes me so happy. My husband bought me a spiralizer, so time to go have some fun! K.I.S.S.
We really like this recipe and especially laude your creativity! Two things, make that three, stand out:
Gluten free
Use what’s in the fridge
Spiralized zuccini!
Can’t wait to get home and explore into the fridge.
Thank you!