I love Momotaro tomatoes. They are this pinkish-red Japanese tomato that has a mild sweetness to them. While eating them fresh is usually the way to go, I wanted to try cooking them, and I definitely was not disappointed in the end product: I made a tomato sauce with some of the Momotaro tomatoes, and it had this pleasant sweetness to it, reminiscent of a sweet and tangy tomato bisque. When it comes to recipes on this blog, they are either recipes I sought out to make or recipes that were created out of necessity to clean up my fridge produce. While I love the concept of this dish, I will be honest in saying that this is a fridge produce recipe. I had leftover fennel and green apple lying around from another recipe, and I purchased the Momotaro tomatoes, ponzu, and shisso(think mint, but mildly sweeter, also called perilla!) for a different recipe, meaning I had those four ingredients to work with. Hilariously, these ingredients(tomatoes, apples, aromatics, and herbs) all can work well together in a Japanese curry, but I wanted do something that would highlight the Momotaro tomato instead of burying it in too many spices. So instead, I went with a tomato-forward pasta recipe, embracing the Momotaro tomatoes in both a cooked and a fresh state! I personally love Japanese-style pasta. There are actually quite a few of those kinds of restaurants here in sunny Southern California(at least two in the South Bay where I’m based). Japanese-styled, also referred to as wafu, pasta still uses Italian ingredients(usually), but incorporates umami-forward ingredients like dashi, soy sauce, or mushrooms to add that extra level of umami. In my case, I used ponzu, which is a soy sauce that is seasoned with vinegar and/or citrus, to add that umami, and to play off the tartness of the tomatoes.

For this recipe, the sauce is entirely what defines it. I went somewhat the route of pasta amatricana(pasta with a tomato-bacon type of sauce), but it felt wrong to call it that when I did not use ingredients like cheese that would make it more in line with amatricana. This sauce, if thinned out with milk or cream, could be eaten as a tomato bisque, but in this case, I cooked out some aromatics, the green apple, and garlic with rendered bacon fat(the rendered bacon comes back as a garnish on top), some tomato paste and other seasonings(oregano, thyme, and red chili) to form a sort of flavor base for the sauce itself. With the Momotaro tomatoes, I peeled the tomatoes then blended them with that flavor base and some ponzu, and then reduced that all down into an almost jammy tomato sauce consistency. Awkwardly I was originally going to use boxed pasta because I was lazy(and because more often than not, Japanese-style pastas use boxed linguine), but I did not have any on hand, so I wound up just making my own pasta from scratch. If you want to use boxed pasta, such as a linguine like I intended, be sure to cook it for about 9 minutes in boiling water, then finish it in the sauce for another 1-2 minutes. The fresh pasta is something that is almost second nature to me at this point, having made my own pasta for almost a decade now, and it comes together quite quickly. I would just recommend using a pasta roller to facilitate that process. I serve the pasta in the sauce with the crispy rendered bacon, some diced peeled Momotaro tomatoes, and some chiffonaded shiso leaves to make the dish taste like it came from a Japanese-Italian bisto!

Makes 2 servings:
For the Momotaro tomato sauce:
2 strips bacon, cut into 1/8-inch wide strips
1 bay leaf
2oz diced fennel
1oz green apple, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1 tbsp tomato paste
a pinch of oregano
a pinch of thyme
a pinch of red chili flakes
a pinch of salt
1oz ponzu
4 Momotaro tomatoes

In a pan, render the bacon until crispy. Reserve the bacon and in the same pan with the rendered bacon fat, sweat out the bay leaf, fennel, green apple, and garlic first. Once the fennel is translucent, add to that the tomato paste, oregano, and thyme, chili flakes, and salt, and saute everything on medium-low heat for another 2 minutes. Transfer to a blender and add the ponzu to that. Score the Momotaro tomatoes on the rounded side, making two incisions with a knife to form a cross or X shape. In a pot with boiling water, boil the tomatoes for 1 minute. Shock the tomatoes in ice water and peel the skins off. Place 3 of the tomatoes(you will reserve one for garnish) into the blender with the other ingredients and puree together everything until it is smooth. Pour the liquid into a pan and cook on medium-low heat until reduced by half. Reheat the sauce right before serving.

For the pasta dough:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
a pinch of salt, plus more for boiling

In a bowl, mix everything together into a smooth dough. Allow the dough to rest for 5-10 minutes before rolling out the dough (if using a pasta roller, I rolled this to the second thinnest setting, which was roughly the thinness of 2 stacked poker cards) and cutting it into 1/8-inch wide noodles. Bring a pot with heavily salted water to a boil. Boil the noodles in the salted water for 90 seconds before transferring to the pan with the sauce, tossing the noodles through the sauce right before serving.

For garnish:
3 shiso leaves
Reserved peeled Momotaro tomato

Chiffonade the shiso leaf. With the peeled tomato, cut into a medium dice. Place the pasta into the desired serving vessel and garnish with the diced tomato and the shisso to finish.