Quick Tomato-Caper Sauce

Devised this recipe as a quick way to render tomatoes for supper during the summer crop. The sauce is vastly better with home-grown tomatoes. This time of year, it's better with canned diced tomatoes than the supermarket hot-house produce.

There's wide lattitude in the recipe (number of tomatoes, add more veggies or different herbs). The key combo is onion-tomato-caper in olive oil, which somehow ends up strangely buttery. I've used it for pizza sauce or directly on pasta - pictured here with shrimp over linguini.

The sauce can be ready to eat before pasta is done cooking.

Quick Tomato-Caper Sauce

• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 c diced onion
• 1 T garlic
• 1-2 T capers
• 1-4 fresh tomatoes, chopped, or a can of petite diced tomatoes
• salt to taste
• optional : whatever herbs go with what you're making (dill above, or basil, or...)
• optional : thawed frozen shrimp (above)
• optional : sliced zucchini, chopped peppers... anything that cooks quickly

Sauté onion, garlic, and capers in olive oil until the onions are transparent (2 min for frozen onion, 5 minutes for fresh). Dump in tomatoes, herbs and salt to taste, and whatever else you want in the sauce. Heat back up to simmering, plus 5 minutes.