Olive Garden Capellini Pomodoro

Heartsong's Note:

This is an incredibly easy, incredibly delicious dish. It is a takeoff from the Olive Garden original. I like more garlic, more basil, and less oil than their recipe calls for, but you can go to their website and get the original. This is a real kid pleaser. If they hate tomatoes, leave them out. It's still delicious. I wanted to add that you almost can't put too much basil in this. I made this again last night and probably used 40 large basil leaves or more, and some fresh parsley that my son picked by mistake. I did note that when I used 6 cloves of garlic, they were small to medium cloves. When they were large, I used only 4. Garlic is a matter of preference, though and you may love 6 large cloves. You can also increase the amount of fresh tomato, but do increase your garlic in proportion. It always amazes me that this dish is so fast and sooooooooooooooo delicious!

• Total Time: 12 mins
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 7 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 8 ounces pasta
• 6 garlic cloves, pressed
• salt
• pepper (fresh ground, if possible)
• parmesan. romano cheese or asiago cheese
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 8 fresh tomatoes, diced (or 2 cans diced tomatoes)
• 20 fresh basil leaves, diced

Directions:

1. Boil pasta in salted water and drain.
2. You may process garlic, olive oil, basil leaves, salt and pepper whole in mini chopper or food processor and then stir into drained noodles.
3. Or add garlic, olive oil, and basil. Stir well. Add salt, pepper, and tomatoes.
4. Adjust seasonings to taste.
5. Top with Parmesan, Romano, or Asiago cheese.

Reviews

[Hadice]

Um...YUM! We had what seemed like a million roma tomatoes to use, and this was the perfect recipe for it! I opted to blend the ingredients to make a semi-pesto. Simply delicious!

[MaryMomof6]

We LOVED this. I added about a cup of baby spinach leaves to it to increase the protein and just chopped them in the food processor with the rest. Thanks Heartsong!

[Katie F]

Delicious and easy to make! I did 1 can of diced tomatoes with green chiles as well as fresh tomatoes, and added about 2x as much garlic as recommended (seeing as we love garlic at my house). Thanks for the recipe!