Pasta with Sicilian Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients
¹⁄₃ cup pine nuts
1 pound pasta (I used rotini.)
1 pound green tomatoes, roughly chopped
¹⁄₂ cup olive oil
2-4 cloves garlic
¹⁄₄ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper
2 dozen basil leaves, torn into small pieces

Instructions
1. Place pine nuts in small skillet over medium-high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and just starting to brown. 

2.  Bring large pot of salted water to boil over high heat.  Add pasta and cook following package instructions.  Drain well. 

3. Place pine nuts, tomatoes, oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes into food processor bowl and process just until sauce is chunky.  (You can prepare the sauce 1 to 2 hours ahead of time and keep at room temperature.) 

4. Season sauce with salt and pepper.  Add basil.  Toss pasta with sauce and serve. 

Comments
I’d never had a green tomato before last year and was less than thrilled with the typical fried treatment.  I also didn’t have much luck finding other ways to cook them, so I was left feeling like green tomatoes were a loss.  This year I was looking through Fresh from the Farmers’ Market and I found this recipe.  It seemed like it might be worth trying and since I had the green tomatoes I needed to use them somehow, right? 

I was very pleasantly surprised by this dish!  The green tomatoes worked very well to give the sauce a fruity kind of taste.  The red pepper flakes added heat and the garlic brought along quite a bit of flavor.  This pasta was tasty enough to make me think that green tomatoes might deserve a few more chances – it’s just a matter of finding the right (recipes! 

Shown here with Baked Italian Chicken.

Fresh from the Farmers’ Market