Pasta with fresh tomato and basil sauce

This is a very simple dish which tastes much better in summer, when tomatoes ripen in the sun and you can pick fresh basil from your garden or (in my case) a pot on your kitchen window. Why a recipe for something as simple as pasta and tomato sauce? You'll find out the answer once you've tasted this recipe my mother taught me. But you have to do exactly as the recipe says. Don't cheat by using tinned tomatoes or not peeling and seeding them.

Ingredients (for five)

• 10 sun-riped tomatoes
• 3 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• 8 fresh basil leaves
• salt

1. Using a knife, draw a cross on the skin of each tomato and place them in a bowl
2. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and let them stand for 5 minutes
3. Meanwhile, peel and chop the garlic and put it in a saucepan with a generous amount of olive oil.
4. Remove the tomatoes from the water and peel them with your fingers (the skin will come out easily)
5. Cut the tomatoes in half, remove the seeds with your fingers and chop the rest.
   
6. Heat up the olive oil with the garlic and, when the garlic starts to "dance" in the oil, add the tomatoes
7. Chop the basil leaves and add them last, together with the salt
   
8. Cook for around 10 minutes
9. Serve with any kind of pasta, cooked al dente.