Pasta in a Greek style no-cook tomato sauce

[juleself]

The Turkish grocery on my street is having the most delicious vine-ripened tomatoes this year and I've been working my way happily through all the tomato recipes in my repertoire lately. I've been doing this one for years already and was quite pleased to see almost the same recipe on Kalyn's Kitchen the other day.

What you need:

Note: I'm German and and don't cook with cup measures. In fact, I'm very much a 'rule of thumb' cook and see recipes more as guidelines. My measurements usually are "a handful of this". :-) To make it easier, I went with most of Kalyn's measurements, since they sounded about right.

Serves 3-4 people

• 1 lb. fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, chopped (cherry tomatoes work as well)
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced black olives
• 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1/4 cup chopped or thinly sliced basil
• 2 tsp. finely chopped fresh oregano (or 1/2 tsp. dried)
• 1 small clove garlic, thinly sliced or pressed (see notes)
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tsp. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• 3 oz. crumbled Feta Cheese (or more)
• salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
• 8 oz. pasta (or 8.8 oz. if you're German like me... 250g is what I use)
• generous amount salt, for pasta water


How it's done:

• Chop and slice the vegetables and herbs.
• Put tomatoes, scallions, olives, garlic and herbs into a bowl large enough to also hold the pasta. Mix well.
• Add lemon juice and olive oil, mix again.
• Let it marinate at room temperature for at least an hour.

A note on garlic: Garlic is totally optional in this, but I think it rounds up the Greek flavor nicely. If you don't like raw garlic, you can sautee it in a skillet for a minute or so in a teensy bit of oil. And if you don't own a garlic press (like me, I got fed up with cleaning the darn thing), here's a neat way to prepare the garlic: chop it up, then add a bit of salt and mash it up to a paste on the chopping board with a fork.

• When the veggies have marinated to your taste, put a medium-sized pot with water on the stove and bring it to a boil. Don't add salt just yet! (Already salted water takes longer to boil.)
• Meanwhile, add the crumbled Feta to your sauce.
• When water boils, add salt. (More than you think you need, pasta water needs a lot of salt.)
• Add pasta, cook per instructions on the package.
• When pasta is done, drain it and let it cool for a minute or so.
• Mix pasta under the sauce, add salt and pepper to taste. Serve and enjoy!


What I really love about this recipe:

Add 1/4 cup of sliced cucumbers and bell peppers each to your 'sauce' and let the pasta cool down completely before you add it and you have a pretty good Greek pasta salad. ;-) I often use only half the pasta and sauce for a 'warm meal' and prepare the rest with additional veggies as salad for later.

Bon Appetit!

Comments

[juleself]

Do you have a freezer? Because those soups veggies (celery, carrot, leek) freeze really well. Just chop it up, put it in a freezer bag and use it up bit by bit.

[travelingmonkey]

Do they? I will take note of that for the future! We didn't used to (our apt has one of those annoying [what my husband refers to as] "French refrigerators," the like half-size ones, with the stupid little "freezer" box on top? urgh. We eventually bought one though, that's like the same size as the fridge, and use it for other veggies that we buy frozen. But that will definitely help! One of the reasons I haven't made any again is the following need to use up the veggies! haha. I'll be glad to get it and not have to worry about that! ;D

[juleself]

Well, you can buy them as a mass product in the freezer section of all of our stores. All chopped up and ready to go. I still prefer buying it fresh, though it probably doesn't make much of a difference in either price or taste.

I have one of those small fridges and the freezer section is fairly small. Just enough for one person, unless it's summer and I need to stack ice cream. ;-)

[travelingmonkey]

Does it have a real door? The hostel we stayed at in Vienna had one with a door that had a latch on it and everything, which I presume means it actually works. The ones in 90% of those kind of fridges, though, are absolutely worthless. All they do is take up space that could otherwise be used for refrigeration, and turn into massive blocks of ice that need to be thawed out. >_< *HATE!* You couldn't even keep a thing of ice cream in it! grr. I need to keep ice cream around! I don't eat it all the time, but I want to have it when I want it! hahaha.

I won't buy things with frozen potatoes, or mushrooms. But like I said somewhere ^ up there, lol, we keep a supply of frozen peas, "green vegetables" (aka pea pods, peas, broccoli, and a small amt of red onion), green beans, all colored bell peppers/paprikas, and [bio] broccoli. They're cheaper, and we don't have to worry about finishing them on time, and frozen are just as good as fresh! I don't recall if I've seen any leek or celery in stuff (I am near positive they don't sell them singly though), but you're right, I do think I have at least seen carrots in some mixes. ^^

[juleself]

The freezer compartment has a seperate latched door, what it lacks though is a separate temperature control. One knob for fridge and freezer only. So I can either jack it up all the way to have my freezer reach the -18°C/-4F you're supposed to have to store things longer than three months and have everything in my fridge nearly frozen as well. Or I can keep the fridge at a more reasonable temp and have the freezer reach -10°C/14F, which is okay to keep stuff for a couple of months. Since it's small anyway and I like my electrical bill affordable, that's how I use it.

Mirepoix, or Suppengemüse as we call it here is an absolute staple in the freezer section. It's even available prepared with herbs and spices. Most people buy this rather than buying it fresh, as it saves time and is convenient. I love the chopping (it's rather therapeutic) and my family never did it any other way.

I'm a bit restricted space-wise, so I buy most of my veggies fresh. Frozen leek is available here and it's okay for leek and potato soup, but I still think it's better fresh. *g* Frozen is cheaper most of the time and the shock freezing preserves the vitamins better so it's sometimes better quality than when you buy it fresh. And it's convenient. But I have the whole world of good, fresh produce available and I love to support the neighborhood.

Frozen mushrooms? Ick! *g*

[travelingmonkey]

LOL, very ick. But I'd take those in a heartbeat over those incredibly disturbing looking ones in jars/cans!! hahahaha.

Actually because we bought the freezer, we definitely have more space for the frozen than storing fresh in the fridge. Because in the fridge we generally have a few packages of Quorn, a package/box of mushrooms, whatever opened things haven't been finished (like cans of beans and such), and a couple containers of leftovers, maybe some other item or two for lunch stuff. And usually I have some chocolate pudding (at least, what we call pudding in the US!) in there. If we've recently had Mexican, there's also lettuce and the open rice pkg, and we get one of the fresh veg mixes they sell, too, to make it, so there's also that. And the drawer is strictly for cheese, lol. We're cheese freaks. Or well, I am, and I've kind of made him into one. ;P So it's usually... not exactly full but, not very roomy. We use the bottom, large, drawer of the freezer for all the veggies. ^^ And buying from the [large chain] grocery store is def not supporting the locals, so fresh vs frozen totally doesn't matter in that regard. Otherwise, yeah, I can see that being a good reason to do so.

Ooh, I've never heard of that, nice. Yeah that's a big combo of specific types of cooking, but actually not so big in our house. For soups, definitely, and certain stuff...but we just don't tend to do that much. Our specific staple, like I said earlier, is onions, garlic, mushrooms. LoL. Yeah, we're kinda odd, but it works for us! ;P