Mediterranean Pasta with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes

So the other weekend was a very busy weekend, with swim class for the little guy, cleaning the house and hosting two dinners. This might not sound overwhelming, but when you have kids to feed both nights and you don't want to make a separate meal, it can be challenging to try and find something for everyone. Saturday night was a special challenge because one of the guests has a peanut allergy and a pet allergy. It was easy enough to make arrangements for the dog to be taking to my parents house for a night of pet-sitting. Trying to keep the exposure to peanuts at a minimum is challenging since my son eats peanut butter practically every day and this particular day he got peanut butter on his pants and in his hair, requiring a bath and a change of clothes before our guests arrived.

So after grocery shopping and checking all the food labels for peanut allergy warnings I decided to make Mediterranean Pasta with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes. I've made this one time before and I remember really enjoying the flavor-packed tomatoes. I got this recipe from a magazine ad for McCormick's Spiced Sea Salt.

The plan was to serve four adults and three children. I bought two pounds of roma tomatoes, as the recipe called for, and the rest of the ingredients. After I got home I prepped and popped the tomatoes in the oven and then I re-read the recipe. It called for 8oz of pasta. I don't know about you, but between me and my husband we can eat 8oz of pasta with no problem. I had a one pound box of fettuccini so I cooked it all. The smell drifting out of the oven was to die for! The perfect blend of tomatoes, garlic and the sea salt mixture was pure Heaven.

Considering all pasta basically tastes alike, you'd think I'd like fettuccini, but I don't. I prefer small, bite-size pieces of pasta. I was trying to replicate the photo with the recipe and it looked like a thicker noodle so I used the fettuccini.

My guests arrived as two instead of four. No longer was a peanut allergy an issue, but what was an issue was the amount of pasta I had cooked. It looked like plenty for the original seven, but it didn't look like enough fire-roasted tomatoes. After smashing half of the tomatoes and tossed everything in with about 3/4 of the pasta. We all helped ourselves to dinner and sprinkled on extra sea salt to suit our preferences.

My final thought are that I should've used angel hair pasta. I think the lighter, thinner pasta would've complimented the tomatoes better. I also should've only used half of the cooked pasta, especially since I had two less diners than expected. The meal was wonderful, I just wish I had gotten more fire-roasted tomatoes.

http://www.mccormickgourmet.com/Recipes/Main-Dishes/Mediterranean-Pasta-with-Fire-Roasted-Tomatoes.aspx

This recipe is slightly different than the one I used. It looks like they've tweaked it a bit.