No-Cook Summer Tomato Pasta Recipe

You wait all year long for them: locally grown tomatoes—fat, red and bursting with sweet-acidic flavor.

If you’re like me, in August you gorge on these summer-only delicacies, tirelessly eating them for lunch, dinner and snack day after day.

The less you fuss with perfect summer tomatoes the better.

One of my favorite ways to eat ripe tomatoes is thickly-sliced and plopped on a slab of Arthur Avenue Italian bread spread with Hellman’s mayonnaise. A generous sprinkle of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper completes the taste sensation I dream about for the remaining eleven months of the year.

Another simple and delicious way to enjoy summer tomatoes’ unadorned full flavor is in No-Cook Summer Tomato Pasta.


True to its name, No-Cook Summer Tomato Pasta is made of raw, chopped tomatoes. You can peel and seed the tomatoes—my preference—or not. Either way, toss them in a bowl with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, herbs, salt and pepper. Let the mixture sit for a few hours.

When you’re ready to eat, put on a pot of water and boil your favorite pasta. Long, thin pasta—spaghetti, spaghettini, fettucine and bucatini—work beautifully with this raw sauce, allowing you to wind the pasta and spear chunks of tomato with your fork.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it and put it back in the pot. Pour the uncooked tomato sauce over the hot pasta, tossing to coat the noodles with olive oil and tomato juices. Serve immediately, passing a bowl of Parmesan cheese at table.

No-Cook Summer Tomato Pasta Recipe

3 cups locally grown tomatoes—3-6 tomatoes, depending on size, chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, or more to taste
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2-3 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped or 1 teaspoon dried basil
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
1 pound spaghetti or other long, thin pasta
Grated Parmesan cheese

1. If you want to peel and seed the tomatoes, here’s how: Bring water to boil in a sauce pan. Plunge as many tomatoes as will fit into the pan. Let boil for about a minute. Remove tomatoes from pan with a fork and run cold water over them. The skin should split, see photo above. If not, stick the tomatoes back in the boiling water for another 30 seconds. Cool tomatoes under cold running water. Peel their skins and slice off and reserve the tops of the tomatoes. This reveals the tomatoes’ seed-filled inner channels. With your finger—if you know another method, tell me—scoop out the seeds.
2. Cut tomatoes into bite-sized chunks.
3. In a ceramic or glass bowl toss tomatoes with olive oil, basil, garlic, salt and pepper. Let tomatoes marinate for several hours.
4. When ready to eat, boil and drain pasta. Dump drained pasta back into pot.
5. Pour tomato and olive oil mixture over pasta, salt and pepper to taste and toss to coat pasta strands with mixture. Serve immediately, passing Parmesan cheese at table.

Serves 8.