Some Kind of Tomato Sauce

By Caroline Clough in Food on May 24, 2006 3:57PM

Chicagoist thought we'd share a very simple and yet exquisitely tasty pasta sauce we came up with a few weeks ago. Perfect for a weekend lunch or workaday dinner.

Chicagoist is currently without our trusty camera so please forgive us for the lack of accompanying photographs. The following recipe is enough for two servings of sauce.

What You Need
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves of garlic (minced)
1 medium tomato, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1-2 tablespoons capers
3-5 tablespoons goat cheese
Pasta for two (we used a combination of Papparadelle and small shells

What You Do
1) Put a large pot of water (with about a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil) on a back burner, and bring it up to a boil.
2) Put the olive oil in a small saucepan, and turn it up to medium heat. Put the garlic in, and sautee for two minutes or until the garlic is smelling your entire house up.
3) Add the tomato to the garlic, and stir.
4) Add the tomato paste and capers.
5) Put the pasta into the now-boiling water.
6) Over low heat add the goat cheese to the sauce, and stir occasionally until the pasta is cooked.
7) Drain the pasta, and put it into a bowl or onto a plate. Then spoon on the sauce.

Notes:
The first time we made this sauce we only used about 2 tablespoons of goat cheese- this gave the sauce a creamy consistency, but we didn't actually taste the cheese. Depending on how you feel about the taste of goat cheese. The next time we upped it to 5 tablespoons and then it was very goat cheesy. So, depending on your palate do what you feel is best. This is the same with the capers- if you like capers put in more, and if you're not such a big fan put in less ... you can also simply substitute salt for capers if you like.