Recipe Tuesday! Tomato – Pancetta Cream Sauce

We’re starting a new series called “Recipe Tuesday” where we share one of our favorite dishes and invite you to do the same. Enjoying good food is such an important part of life – and sometimes when traveling it just isn’t that easy to find good recipes. But we’re about to change all that! Let’s share the good stuff we find. Hope you enjoy our little culinary adventure.

Spending the past few weeks in Italy has found us IN LOVE with pasta, so our first recipe to share is Tomato-Pancetta Cream Sauce for pasta. It is, without a doubt, one of our favorite pasta sauces of all time and it’s SO easy to make. You probably have most of the ingredients around the house anyway. This sauce is a great way to use up some of those fresh, late summer tomatoes – just double the recipe and freeze it for a quick and easy meal. Mangia!

Tomato – Pancetta Cream Sauce For Pasta

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped with juice (or 1 can undrained Italian-style diced tomatoes)
1 tablespoon dried basil leaves
3/4 teaspoon white sugar
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/4 cup milk or heavy cream (I used 1% and it was wonderful)
1/2 cup cubed pancetta

Sauté garlic and onions in olive oil until just opaque, then add tomatoes, basil, sugar, oregano, salt and pepper. Cook until tomatoes soften – about 10 minutes. Pour the entire mixture into blender and add milk. Pulse until smooth. Sauté pancetta until browned, pour off excess fat, then add mixture from blender into saucepan. Simmer together for 5 minutes and then serve over pasta. Makes 5 servings.

We used fresh gnocchi (because it was homemade here in the village) and it held the sauce very well, but any type of pasta would be fine to try.

Please let us know if you give this sauce a try and how you liked it. And we’d love for you to share a favorite recipe of your own. Just leave it in the comments below and if you’d like us to share it with our readers as well, we’d be happy to oblige!