Creamy Tomato Pasta

Any colored pasta turns into a orange/red hued one as soon as it hits my husband's plate. He adds oodles of tomato based condiments to his pasta and tells me that he is making it more flavorful. I stopped complaining long ago and keep making tomato based pastas more often instead. Today's recipe is the standard one I make but added some evaporated milk to make it creamier. I used evaporated milk instead of cream / milk just because I had some leftover evaporated milk that had to be used. The evaporated milk lends a nice, creamy background for the tomato sauce based pasta and makes it more flavorful. I used twisted elbows that was a carrot, corn, squash pasta blend. Penne, shell pasta or any long pasta can be substituted for elbow pasta.

Ingredients:
1 & 1/2 cups twisted elbows
1 to 2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely minced
8 oz / 225 gm / 1 cup tomato sauce (I used store-bought sauce.)
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
About 1/2 cup evaporated milk / cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan (optional)
Chopped basil leaves to garnish (optional)

Method:
* Heat oil in a saute pan and add minced garlic and onion. Saute until light golden. Add tomato sauce and ground pepper to the pan and let it simmer on low flame, just to let the flavor build up. Taste and adjust the salt if needed.
* Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente. Drain the pasta in a colander and return it back to the pot in which it was cooked. Add evaporated milk or cream and gently give a stir to mix.
* Pour the tomato sauce mixture over the pasta and stir to combine.
* Garnish with Parmesan and basil and serve warm.

This goes to Blogging Marathon #50, under the theme of "Pasta". Check out the link to find out what other marathoners are cooking.

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