Story
This recipe is inspired by Bucatini With Roasted Garlic and Cherry Tomatoes posted in Canadian Living (https://www.canadianliving.com/food/recipe/bucatini-with-roasted-garlic-and-cherry-tomatoes). The original recipe uses cherry tomatoes, but I found that almost any tomatoes will work great. I tried it with slightly larger grape tomatoes, Roma and other plum tomatoes, and, when I didn’t have fresh tomatoes, I used canned peeled whole Roma or San Marzano tomatoes.
The original recipe calls for bucatini pasta, which is similar to spaghetti, but much thicker and with a little hole in the center, like a thin tube. For me this variety is too heavy, to the extent to be harder to load on your fork or spoon. So I prefer to use spaghetti, spaghettini, linguine or even tagliatelle. It also worked great with home made tagliatelle that I make occasionally from the remaining dough after making polish pierogi (Note A).
I adjusted amounts of spices to my liking, but treat those as guidelines and use more or less according to your taste.
Recipe
The recipe below makes 6 rather large servings roasted in a large glass baking dish (about 12×9 inches 2inch deep, 30×22 cm x 5cm). For half portion use amounts shown in the right column.
Ingredients
| Full portion | Half portion | |
| 2 cans 750 mL | San Marzano peeled whole tomatoes1. Squish them by hand and spread over the bottom of the baking dish. | 1 can |
| 8-10 | garlic cloves, sliced thinly or chopped | 4-5 |
| 1/4 cup | extra virgin olive oil | 2 tbsp |
| 2 tsp | dried Basil | 1 tsp |
| 1/2 tsp | hot pepper flakes | 1/4 tsp |
| 1/2 tsp | salt | 1/4 tsp |
| 1/2 cup | grated Parmigiano Reggano2, to top the dish when serving | 1/4 cup |
| 1 lb | spaghetti, tagliatelle or other pasta | 1/2 lb |
- If using fresh tomatoes, halve them or cut into quarters. You can also cut the canned tomatoes but if you squish them before roasting you will get more “saucy” dish. ↩︎
- You can use other sharp hard cheese like Grana Padano ↩︎
Directions
- In a 12×9 inch glass baking dish spread the tomatoes, garlic, spices and salt. Sprinkle over with extra virgin olive oil and mix together. Distribute evenly over the whole dish.
- Roast in a 400°F (205°C) oven for about 25-30 minutes. If using fresh tomatoes, they should shrivel and garlic should become soft. If using canned tomatoes, that contain, some liquid tomato sauce, it should be almost boiling.
- While the sauce is roasting cook pasta in salted water, and drain when ready.
- You can mix all pasta with all sauce to coat it well, then serve it sprinkled with gratef Parmigiano Reggano. If you need to keep some left overs it is better store the cooked pasta and the sauce separately. On the next day you can heat the sauce in a pot on low until hot and toss pasta into it to warm everything together.
Notes
A. I use pasta roller/cutter but a sheet of pierogi dough can be just rolled thin and cut by knife.