Ripe tomatoes and brie meld into this luscious, no-cook pasta sauce

Washington Post

4 days ago

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Years ago, to celebrate summer tomatoes, The Post held an annual contest called Top Tomato, where readers were invited to submit their best tomato recipes. (This was before my time here.) This recipe for Pasta With Fresh Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Brie comes from Patrice Kehoe, whose creamy tomato pasta with just the right amount of garlic flavor earned her a spot among the finalists.
While browsing our recipe archives earlier this year, I came across it and left the browser tab open because it caught my eye. It reminded me of a recipe I'd made years ago out of 'The Silver Palate Cookbook' by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins with Michael McLaughlin.
Get the recipe: Pasta With Fresh Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Brie
If you're not familiar with this cookbook, which was first published the year I was born, all you need to know is that the Silver Palate was a very popular shop specializing in prepared foods — akin to a traiteur — in New York City for many years until it closed in 1993. Rosso and Lukins were the brains behind the operation. They each published cookbooks of their own, and others together, but it's 'The Silver Palate Cookbook' that's best-known and still in print.
Chicken Marbella is easily the most famous recipe to come out of the book. But in a chapter titled 'Summer Pasta,' Rosso and Lukins included a recipe for linguine with tomatoes and basil. If you were skimming, you would think that was all there was to it: linguine, tomatoes and basil. And, done well (with enough olive oil, salt and pepper), linguine, tomatoes and basil is a pretty perfect meal.
But no. After the '4 ripe large tomatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes' and before the '1 cup cleaned fresh basil leaves, cut into strips,' there is '1 pound Brie cheese, rind removed, torn into irregular pieces.'
When I saw that, it stopped me in my tracks. Brie? In pasta?
'We first had this uncooked pasta sauce when we were guests in a beautiful home on Sardinia,' Rosso and Lukins write in the recipe's headnote. 'Such a recipe could only be the result of hot, lazy days and abundant ripe tomatoes and basil. The heat of the pasta warms and brings out the flavors of the sauce in a wonderfully subtle way. Delicious and easy.'
Kehoe agreed, and spent years making the pasta as written for her family before she made it her own by calling for roasted garlic instead of fresh. She also reduced the pound of brie to just 6 ounces. Her other major alteration? When she's in a hurry, she skips part of the first step of the original recipe, which says to let the uncooked sauce sit at room temperature for two hours. I agree with Kehoe. Although an hour or two of resting time allows the flavors of the sauce to mingle and intensify, it's not necessary.
What is a good idea is to be sure that you use the absolute best summer tomatoes you can find and set the bowl of sauce ingredients near your pot of pasta water, or somewhere warm, to encourage the tomatoes to release their juices and the brie to soften. That way, when the hot pasta hits it, it will swiftly melt and meld into an incomparably luscious sauce that requires no cooking but tastes as if it could have taken all day to make.
Bonus: This recipe serves 6 and takes 30 minutes to cook, making it great dinner party fare. (Of course, you can also scale it down.) Pair it with a salad of chicories or arugula and some fresh bread for an easy feast.
Get the recipe: Pasta With Fresh Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Brie