Pasta sauce 2 ways

In an ideal world I would make all of my pasta sauce from scratch. After all, it's easy, cheap, healthy & it freezes well.

In reality I'm just not that organised at the moment. So, when we inevitably resort to a jar of pasta sauce for dinner, our preferred choice is the Cherry Tomato & Basil from Sacla Italia.
This sauce is full of flavour, filled with lots of whole cherry tomatoes and has a pretty simple list of ingredients with no hidden nasties. An added bonus is it's readily available in regular supermarkets.Here, we used it as a pizza sauce, a job it performs remarkably well. This is a pita bread pizza with capsicum, mushroom, pineapple, olives and some diced cheezly. Normally I don't put cheese substitutes on pizza, but I had the end bit of a cheezly roll to use up.
The next evening we had pita bread pizza again - something you couldn't really do with regular calorie & cholesterol soaked pizza. This time the toppings were baby spinach, olives, mushrooms, capsicum, pineapple & creamed corn. All I can say is, yum!
The second use for our favourite jar of pasta sauce was to make a lazy-person's lasagne - specifically Chelsey's Meaty Lasagne.

I really liked this recipe - particularly the pine nuts on the top for something a little bit different. The flavours were everything you would expect from a traditional lasagne, but obviously much healthier due to the lack of dead animals :-)

The only thing I changed was doubling the white sauce quantity - I like my lasagne very saucy. Next time, I'll probably make even more again - there wasn't quite enough to spread on the top as I would have liked.

Beany Pasta

Only 2 days of Vegan Mofo to go. I let it go at the end of last week - just too tired & too busy...

In an attempt to clear out the old vegies in the fridge, I threw this pasta sauce together last night. I make variations of it all the time - sometimes using lentils or chickpeas instead of the kidney beans & always with a different variety of veg. This one turned out really well - I'm glad we have leftovers for tonight.Start by dicing your vegies - I used 1 onion, 1 celery stalk, 1 carrot, 1 zucchini & 1 cup of mushrooms. Cook the onion, celery & carrot in some olive oil with 1 clove of crushed garlic for about 7 mins, until they're nice & soft. Then add the zucchini & mushrooms & cook another couple of minutes.

Add 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 can of kidney beans (drained & rinsed), about 1TBS of balsamic vinegar, 2 tsp dry basil & salt/pepper to taste. Simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally, about 20mins, until thick & rich. Serve with the pasta of your choice (I used wholemeal spaghetti).

Meditteranean Pasta

There's nothing particularly mind-blowing about this dinner - it's just an example of one of the quick, simple meals I eat when I'm not feeling particularly inspired. Despite that, it remains one of my favourites (I practically lived on this when I was a student), and it can easily be adapted for whatever veg you have in your fridge.For this one I chopped 1 onion finely, diced 1 large carrot, diced 2 stalks of celery & diced about 1 cup of mushrooms. I fried the onion, carrot & celery with a crushed garlic clove & a tiny bit of chilli paste in olive oil for about 5 mins. Then I added the mushrooms & cooked them for a couple of minutes. I added 1 can of diced tomatoes, a slurp of balsamic vinegar (you could also use red or white wine), a pinch of dry basil & some salt & pepper. I turned the heat down & let it all simmer for about 20-30mins until the sauce was nice and thick. While that was happening I cooked some wholemeal spaghetti & that's it!

I often add some protein to this sauce - lentils or kidney beans - but I wasn't in the mood. I also added some chopped black olives to my sauce after serving (D hates olives).

Zucchini, Tomato & Lentil Pasta-Bake

There wasn't much mid-week cooking worth posting about last week - this is about the most interesting. Looking back on my previous posts there is definitely a theme of winter comfort food - soups, stews & bakes; so this at least fits the theme. Going through the vege box, I wanted to use the 2 large zucchini next. It's been a while since we had pasta & the week before seemed to be quite heavy on rice so I figured a pasta-bake would hit the spot.

Ingredients

• 1 onion, finely diced
  
• 2 large zucchini, diced
  
• 1 large carrot, diced
  
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  
• 1 x 400g can diced tomatoes
  
• 2 TBS tomato paste
  
• 1/4 cup red wine (optional)
  
• 1 x 400g can brown lentils, rinsed & drained
  
• 1 tsp each dried basil, oregano & marjoram
  
• Salt & pepper to taste
  
• 4 cups cooked pasta of choice (I used wholemeal spirals)
  
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
  
• 1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast flakes

Preheat the oven to 180. Saute the onion, carrot & garlic in olive oil 5mins until softened. Add the zucchini & saute another few minutes. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, lentils, herbs, salt & pepper. Cook, stirring, 10-15mins, until the sauce has thickened & reduced a little.

In a large oven-proof casserole dish combine the pasta & sauce. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs & Nutritional Yeast over the top & bake, uncovered, 20-25mins, until browned.

This made heaps & heaps - enough for about 2-3 nights of leftovers for D & I, so make sure you adjust the amounts if you don't want to be eating the same thing all week.