Sundried Tomato and Caper Pasta Sauce

From the blog "A Year of Slow Cooking"

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/08/sundried-tomato-and-caper-pasta-sauce.html

This is a great, easy pasta sauce with a nice tang due to a handful of sundried tomatoes and capers. They say you can (or should) add frozen peas but we did not and I am glad we did not.

The Ingredients.

--1/2 cup sundried tomatoes in oil, drained and rinsed (we got ours at Trader Joes)
--5 fresh tomatoes, chopped (In a pinch, I think you could use good quality, canned diced tomatoes)
--1 medium onion, minced
--8 garlic cloves, chopped
--2 T capers, drained
--1 T Italian seasoning
--1/2 cup frozen peas, optional
--fresh Parmesan cheese, optional (Not optional for me - mandatory!)
--1 pound cooked pasta (The blog author used Trader Joe's brown rice penne, we used regular pasta)

The Directions.

Use a 4-6 quart crockpot for this sauce.

Chop up the tomatoes, garlic, and onion and toss them into yourcrockpot. Add the tablespoon of Italian seasoning. After draining and rinsing off as much of the oil as you can from the sundried tomatoes, add 1/4 cup of them whole to the crockpot. Chop up the remaining 1/4 cup, and then add that. Stir in the 2 T of drained capers.

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Stir in the frozen peas 20 minutes before serving. Toss the sauce with hot cooked pasta. Garnish with shredded Parmesan cheese.

My notes? Overall - yummy. My husband is learning to use the crockpot and we were both very happy with the results. Easy enough for him, tasty enough for us both - and the parm cheese at the end is the perfect touch. This makes a good amount of sauce, and it's just the two of us, so... we had it for dinner, a bit topping an omelet the next day - and there was still enough to freeze two small tubs for future dinners. Two thumbs up!