This blistered tomato pasta with mascarpone and arugula comes together quickly and easily, for a perfect weeknight meal.
Sometimes dishes show up on our dinner table for the sole purpose of using up stuff in my fridge. In this case, I had a part carton of mascarpone in desperate need of a destination. Mascarpone is not cheap and I wasn’t going to be wasting it. I also had some arugula. And a few tomatoes. So dinner was decided and it was delicious!
This is a quick and easy pasta dish that comes together in about the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta. The tomatoes are quickly “blistered” by broiling in the oven. This only takes a few minutes. Angel hair pasta boils up in about 5 minutes, so it’s quick, too. It all comes together in a hot skillet with the mascarpone and arugula for a quick toss to coat the pasta.
Ingredients and substitutions
A few notes about the key ingredients …
Mascarpone – Don’t worry if you don’t happen to have some leftover mascarpone to use up. I’ve included a quick and easy substitute, that uses cream cheese, cream and sour cream. You’ll find it at the bottom of the Recipe Card. You could also use crème fraîche if you have some on hand.
Tomatoes – I happened to have roma tomatoes, but any tomato will do, including a carton of cherry tomatoes (would be pretty with red and yellow cherry tomatoes!)
Arugula – I love arugula and almost always have it on hand, but baby spinach would work well here, too.
Recipe tips!
- The secret to this dish is salt and pepper. You need to season this dish well to really round out the flavours! Take the time to taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning, as needed, as well.
- If you sauce thickens or tightens up during this last short cooking, add a splash of your pasta cooking water to loosen it up.
- To make sure I don’t dirty another pan, I always start my sauce in a large enough skillet or pot so that it will comfortably hold my cooked pasta as well, when it is cooked and ready to be added to the pot.
Tips for delicious pasta!
My pasta dish cooking technique has evolved over the years, to include a couple of techniques that I think produce the most satisfying pasta dishes …
- Be sure to generously salt your pasta cooking water, to bring lots of flavour to your finished dish. It’s adequately salted when it “tastes like the ocean”.
- Rather than draining pasta in the sink, I scoop the cooked pasta right out of the boiling water with a spider strainer (or tongs, for long pasta) and put it directly into the hot sauce. Adding hot pasta to the sauce helps the pasta to absorb the flavours of the sauce more easily. It also allows for having the pasta-cooking water handy, in case you need to add some to thin your pasta sauce. Be sure to still drain the pasta well in the spoon before adding to the pasta, to avoid watering down your sauce.
- I always cook the pasta with the sauce in a hot skillet (or saucepan) for several minutes before serving. I’ve found that the perfect pasta dish needs to come together in a hot pan first, not in the serving bowl.
Bonus tip!
For tomato-heavy sauces, stirring a small pat of butter into the tomato sauce at the end of cooking tempers the acidity in the sauce and rounds out the flavours.
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Get the Recipe: Blistered Tomato Pasta with Mascarpone
Ingredients
- 3 servings angel hair or thin spaghetti pasta
- 4 roma tomatoes, (or 3 regular tomatoes, or a carton of cherry tomatoes, if you like).
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 Tablespoon vodka, optional
- 1/2 cup mascarpone , or crème frâiche *see substitution in Notes below
- 2 handfuls baby arugula
- Shaved Parmesan
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat your oven broiler with a rack in the upper part of the oven. Cut tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds and discard. Place tomatoes on a baking sheet, skin side up, and place under the broiler. Allow tomatoes to cook until skin is blistered and starting to char.
- Meanwhile, boil a large pot of salted water for pasta.
- Once tomatoes are charred, allow to cool slightly, then coarsely chop. Set aside.
- In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until tender and fragrant. Add chopped tomatoes and vodka, if using. Stir to combine. Reduce heat to low, while you put the pasta on to cook. (If using angel hair pasta, it will take only a few minutes to cook!).
- Once pasta is cooked, increase heat on skillet to medium. Add mascarpone, arugula and a good sprinkling of salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove pasta straight from boiling water to skillet with tongs. Toss to combine, adding additional hot pasta water if needed, to loosen the sauce. Remove from heat and stir in some shavings of Parmesan. Taste and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve garnished with additional shaved Parmesan.
Notes
- The secret to this dish is salt and pepper. You need to season this dish well to really round out the flavours! Take the time to taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning, as needed, as well.
- If you sauce thickens or tightens up during this last short cooking, add a splash of your pasta cooking water to loosen it up.
- To make sure I don’t dirty another pan, I always start my sauce in a large enough skillet or pot so that it will comfortably hold my cooked pasta as well, when it is cooked and ready to be added to the pot.
More pasta recipes to love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
I made this pasta for dinner 3 days ago and it was delicious ! all the flavours blended together so well, it looked really good (Italian flag food !) and though I feared the mascarpone would make the dish sort of heavy, that didn’t happen at all. Now I’ll only have to make it again when we have a pepper mill that actually works and we can be *really* generous with the pepper — we did our best but we have to hit and shake and hit and hit and shake the mill a billion times before it agrees to give us like half a teaspoon of pepper so … Thank you for the recipe !
So glad you enjoyed it, Aimelle!
This is my kind of recipe – I could eat this everyday! Pinned!
Thanks so much, Tricia. Me, too :)
This pasta is the ultimate comfort food! I could eat it every day of the week!
Thanks Julia and me, too! :)
Oh I love when a “clean out the fridge” meal turns into a show stopper. This looks great, Jennifer! I just love mascarpone. Glad it didn’t go to waste!
Thanks Liz. I’ve had some of my best meals from cleaning out the fridge!
I’m not sure that what’s in my fridge would end up anywhere near as delicious as this. It looks wonderful!
Thanks Chris. Having mascarpone to use up is always a good thing :)
I want to devour everything you make, Jennifer…this is so simple and incredibly delicious looking. I love what you say about the salt and pepper, it’s so true!
Thanks Sue. It took me years to learn the secrets of a good salt and peppering :)
This is pasta perfection, what could be better than blistered tomatoes with mascarpone?!
Thanks Laura :)
Such a stunning dish! I love arugula and just happen to have some mascarpone in the fridge waiting to be used, so I think this definitely needs to happen.
Thanks Alexandra. The mascarpone was great in the pasta. Lovely and creamy!
This is beautiful – some of my favorite creations are ones where you are trying to use up odds and ends in your fridge. I always seem to have arugula around too! Beautiful photos Jennifer!
Thanks so much, Jessica. It was a great combination of flavours!
This is something I can so see on my family’s dinner table. Sending this recipe to my mom and sister now!
Thanks for sharing, Sarah :) It was delicious!
Oh my goodness, this looks incredible!! I love the idea of adding arugula – totally making this soon.
Thanks Meghan!