My wife has a friend who was born in Italy, her family came over when she was like 3. Mom taught at a college in Atlanta.
When her mom comes and visits, she makes the absolute best red sauce that has a bit of spice to it. My wife and I also went to Tuscany region Italy a couple years ago with those Aspen peeps and we had a private chef every evening (they paid for it). I also talked him about making his similar spicy tomato based pasta sauce and his instruction was the same. This is a great thing to do with a ton of cherry tomatoes, if you're garden overproduced. That's actually what I am doing now, cooking down and blistering in batches and then can in pints for servicing later.
The secret is the spice blend. When we were in Italy, they had it in a lot of stores, but it's not found so easily here. This is about the best one I can find here. But my wife's friend always refreshes us from her yearly trip back to see family. The key note is the dried pepperoncini in it.
1. Put about 3 table spoons of oil in a straight sidedwall fry pan.
2. Slice up some garlic, thin and the long way.
3. Add about a 2 tsp of that spice mix, pinch of salt, and some pepper.
4. Sautee the spices and garlic for about 3 min, you don't want to burn the garlic.
5. Toss in a pint of fresh cherry tomatoes.
6. The goal is to blister and almost scorch them. Not stir them around much. Stir them initally to coat them in the oil and just leave un touched for about 90sec at a time between when you push them around.
7. Once they break open and start to release the guts, you add the rest of your tomatoes.
For an easy dinner, we simply just add a generic can of crushed (unseasoned) tomatoes. Cook this down for about 20min to thicken in that shallower straight sidewall pan and service over the noodles.
Right now, I have an abundance of Romas and San Marzano's we grew, so I scalded/peeled them and I put all those sauteed cherries in a pot and cooking them down with the sauce tomatoes.
