This is a very simple pasta dish with a ton of flavor. It makes a great side dish, and also is a great dinner by itself. The beauty of this dish is that it is not a heavy red pasta sauce, but rather lighter and fresher, making it great with chicken, fish, such as grilled shrimp, or even steak and pork chops.
TIPS: The basis of this recipe is my “Pasta with Garlic Oil Recipe”, but adding roasted cherry tomatoes and basil. Another option for cooking the cherry tomatoes is to put them on a sheet pan under the broiler (rather than roasting) for about 10-12 minutes, shaking the pan every 5 minutes or so to rotate the tomatoes and prevent burnt spots.
Pasta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Ingredients
For Roasted Cherry Tomatoes:
- 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
For Garlic Oil and pasta:
- 1/3 C extra virgin olive oil
- 2-3 cloves garlic minced
- 1/4 -1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 Tbsp tomato paste
- 1/2 – 3/4 lb angel hair pasta, thin spaghetti or spaghetti
- 1/2 C parmesan grated
- 2 Tbsp fresh basil chopped
Instructions
Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
- Heat oven to 475 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or tinfoil coated in cooking spray.
- In a small bowl, toss together tomatoes, oil, salt and pepper. Pour tomatoes onto baking sheet using rubber spatula to scrape oil from sides of bowl onto tomatoes. Push tomatoes towards center of sheet, close together. Place in oven.
- Bake until tomatoes are blistered and browned or blackened in spots, about 20 minutes, shaking the baking sheet halfway through to rotate tomatoes for more even cooking. Remove from oven.
Make Pasta:
- At the same time as roasting the tomatoes, start the pasta. Bring 3 quarts of salted water to boil over high heat. Once boiling, add pasta and cook until al dente, about 1 minute less than instructions. Turn off stove, and drain pasta into a collander and return the empty, dry pot to the stove.
Make the Garlic Oil:
- Meanwhile, in a seperate very small saucepan, pour olive oil into the pan, and turn stove on to medium heat. Stir in minced garlic and red pepper flakes, and cook just until garlic starts to sizzle and smell good, about 30-45 seconds once oil has heated up (do not let garlic get too brown as it burns very quickly). Remove from heat quickly. Stir or whisk tomato paste into the oil.
- Add drained pasta back into the larger pot. Add the garlic oil mixture as well as the roasted cherry tomatoes, and stir together until well combined.
- Add in most of the grated parmesan cheese (saving some to sprinkle over top) and stir vigorously to mix in. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix in fresh basil.
- Serve topped with more parmesan.
- Enjoy!