Roasted Tomato Pasta

Today I got out of work early!!!! So excited to have the next two days off! A lot of stuff has been going on lately, with me deciding to take the GRE and get my Masters degree and trying to figure it all out, so I decided I needed a wholesome Italian dish for dinner! Now there is nothing I love more than Italian food, chicken parm, lasagna, meatballs, you can do no wrong! However, lets face it, Italian food isn't very light with its mounds of sauce and deep fried glory! Today it was 97 degrees out and the last thing I wanted was something super heavy sitting in my stomach! Therefore, I came up with a lightened Italian pasta dish.

I had a lot of grape tomatoes left in my fridge and to be quiet honest I don't eat tomatoes v ery often. I didn't want them to go bad so I decided to roast them. It's really easy, but sometimes people get intimidated with trying new things. Here are a few simple steps to learn to roast tomatoes:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2) Take a deep baking dish. Thinly coat the bottom with Olive Oil. Place the grape tomatoes in the pan and add some salt and pepper. Give the pan a good shake so the tomatoes get coated in the Olive Oil.

3) Place pan in oven and let roast for about 20 minutes or until tomatoes look soft and wrinkled!

Before

After

The next step was to cook the pasta and make a sauce with the tomatoes. What I did was take some chicken breast, asparagus, roasted tomatoes, and garlic and sautéed them in the pan. I wanted the juice from the roasted tomato to coat the chicken and vegetables.

Before

After

I let the tomato sauce simmer for about 10 minutes while I cooked the pasta. As soon as the pasta was finished I tossed it directly into the pan. No need to strain it! If you get some of the cooking liquid in with the tomatoes that is perfectly fine! It will help deglaze the pan!

Next I grabbed some fresh mozzarella and some fresh basil. Fresh mozzarella is higher in fat then part-skim, however, this dish is so low in fat to begin with I allowed myself an extra indulgence.

Then I garnished the dish and TAHHHH DAHHHH!

Accompanied by a salad with romaine lettuce, organic spring mix, a little parmesan cheese and olive and vinegar dressing. You can not go wrong!

And look! I even have left overs for lunch!