23 Meals That Cost $10 Or Less

14.

Pasta with Roasted Tomato Sauce

“I’m sharing this recipe my Italian housemate from Milan shared with me when I was at university. It’s easy, cheap, and absolutely delicious. 

Preheat the oven to 425° F. You take one 32 ounce can of tomatoes, (or two 15 oz cans). I personally prefer fire-roasted tomatoes for this, but that’s not required. 1/2 cup of butter cut into 8 pieces (which will be 8 tablespoons of butter), 8 cloves of garlic peeled and crushed, 1/4- 1/2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes, and here’s where the recipe gets wiggle room. 

The original recipe calls for two anchovies in oil, I have used anchovy paste or two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce which has anchovies as an ingredient in it. I have not tried using fish sauce, but that could potentially work as well. Any one of these ingredients will work, but leaving this element of the recipe out will make the final dish lacking. Just use whatever is in your cupboard. 

Now for the process. With one of your tablespoons of butter, grease the bottom and sides of a 9×13 baking pan. Then dump all the ingredients into the pan and stir them all together. Add a pinch of sugar (or don’t, I always forget to do this, but the recipe says to do it) and season to taste with salt and pepper to taste. When done, place in the 425°F oven for 35 minutes to an hour until the sauce is ‘jammy.’ The time will depend on what type of tomatoes you use. Whole tomatoes will take longer. Crushed tomatoes will take less time. 

Halfway through the baking time start cooking the pasta. My housemate said bucatini are the preferred pasta shape for this dish, but I’ve also used spaghetti. When the sauce is done, use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon to get the large lumps out, and then mash everything together well until it forms a cohesive sauce. (This shouldn’t take more that a minute.) Add a little saved pasta water to the sauce to loosen it if you need to. Sprinkle some Parmesan on top if you like to eat pasta that way (which I do) and there’s the easy, cheap, meal done!”

—redtoenails