What to do with all those tomatoes? Penne alla Vecchia Bettola, of course

It seemed like a good idea at the time … multiple four packs of tomato plants from my local garden-center, after all they were on sale. Now ripe tomatoes of all shapes and sizes are overtaking my kitchen counters, and as I frown on wasting food, I need to get cooking. As luck would have it, I had the same problem last year and found the answer in a delicious recipe for a pasta sauce that ended in a freezer packed with more than thirty-five large zip-top bags full of the stuff, and I just used the last one — perfect timing!

Abundant tomato harvests and I go back a long way. I remember as a child waking up in the back of our family station wagon after an early morning drive and seeing a sign that said “We grow tomatoes for Campbell's Soup” and knowing that we were picking tomatoes, and bushels of them. The next day our family would all help wash, blanch, and remove skins from tomatoes before packing them into large canning jars. The “popping” of sealing lids was music to our ears, not only because we were done, but also because we knew it meant we would have jars of tomatoes to use in chili, pasta sauce and salsa all winter long.

While my husband and I have never taken our family to a farm to pick tomatoes, we do enjoy growing them in our garden and this year, like last, has proved to be a bumper crop. Luckily, last year I discovered a favorite recipe for pasta sauce is the perfect way to use my harvest.

I found the recipe for Penne alla Vecchia Bettola online a number of years ago, but it wasn't until recently that I realized it is also featured in Foolproof, a cookbook written by Ina Garten, also known as the Barefoot Contessa. Her introduction to the recipe shares the dish has been served at Nick & Toni's, one of her favorite East Hampton restaurants, but originated from a restaurant in Florence, Italy. You can imagine my surprise when while watching an episode of her show I saw my favorite sauce being prepared in a restaurant.

Onions and garlic are sautéed until translucent and are joined by red pepper flakes and dried oregano for a short time before adding a cup of vodka, which is simmered and reduced. Tomatoes are added and the mixture is placed in the oven to bake for 1-½ hours and pureed before adding cream, pasta, and topping with cheese.

The original recipe calls for drained canned tomatoes (Ina recommends San Marzano) that are crushed by hand before being added to the vodka mixture. This is the process I have followed up until last year when, out of desperation, I found success when using fresh unpeeled tomatoes in place of canned. While I do grow the San Marzano variety, I don't always have enough of them for a complete recipe and have resorted to “throwing in” any and all ripe tomatoes I have on hand. This being said, different tomatoes have different moisture contents, so you may need to reduce your sauce a little further after pureeing if it is too thin.

Pasta sauce and canning aficionados will probably cringe at the fact I leave the skins of the tomatoes and mix varieties, but please try the recipe at least once before calling me completely crazy. And as if not peeling the tomatoes weren't enough, I have even started leaving the cream out of the finished product occasionally, because we love the way it tastes without the indulgent addition.

As I mentioned earlier, I made multiple batches of this sauce and froze it in zip-top bags for future use. My trick was to puree the sauce and place one recipe of sauce in each bag, but not add cream until after defrosting. I placed bags of sauce on flat baking sheets, which I removed after the sauce was frozen, as having flat bags helped to maximize my freezer space.

When preparing this dish for my family and friends I like to add about one half pound of crumbled and browned Italian Sausage to the sauce, and allow slightly undercooked pasta to finish cooking in the sauce mixture just prior to serving, thinning the sauce with a little reserved pasta cooking water if necessary. The end result is a cohesive and flavorful masterpiece.

Whether you make this sauce with canned or fresh tomatoes is your choice, but whatever you do — try it! You will be hooked and never want to reach for a jar of sauce again, especially if you have bags of frozen sauce in your freezer. I'm hungry just thinking about it.

• Penny Kazmier, a wife and mother of four from South Barrington, won the 2011 Daily Herald Cook of the Week Challenge.