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Archive for January 3rd, 2009

sitproperly on Jan 3rd 2009 Gaudia Vaisnava, Recipies

Pasta Sauce recipe? Sure!

I’ve been trying to come up with some more recipes lately. I have one for pasta sauce that I’m pretty certain of, as well as one for pizza sauce (it’s different, you know?). I’m also working on one for Szechuan sauce.

The reasons are several (most of ‘em federal)¹. Firstly, I do my best to cook without onions or garlic (keeping in the Vaisnava tradition). Also, if I make it myself, I know it doesn’t contain wacky stuff I’d rather not eat. And it’s just fun.

One of the problems with some recipes is that they call for whole tomatoes, which are often expensive and hard to get. On the other hand, some recipes call for prepackaged ingredients. My recipes fall in between that. No prepackaged spices (and thus no garlic, etc), but I used canned tomatoes. They’re cheaper and I know how to work with them.

Here we go!

Ingredients:
1 28oz can of diced Italian tomatoes
1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes
1/2 c TVP
1/4 c olive oil
4 dried chipotle peppers
1/2 t hing
1 carrot (cut up on largish chunks)
2 T butter (of the vegan variety)
1 t basil
1 t sugar
1/2 t black pepper
1/2 t marjoram
1/2 t oregano
1/2 t salt
2 T nutritional yeast
2 bay leaves

And here’s how to play along…

prep – open the cans (drain the diced tomatoes as much as possible), mix the spices (except for the hing) and soak the tvp
1) Oil in pan and fry the hing and the dried peppers and fry for a minute (careful they don’t explode – seriously). Add the TVP and fry for another minute Add the carrot and fry for yet another minute.
2) Add the whole can of tomato chunks and fry for another minute (it’ll be more like boiling at this point).
3) Add butter and spices, frying for a bit more – not long (again, more like boiling).
4) Add crushed tomatoes, nutritional yeast and bay leaves.
5) Mix and let cook for at least 30 minutes.
6) To serve, remove carrots, peppers and bay leaves.

People like to do different things with pasta sauce. Some like it spicy or smoky (I like it both, thus the chipotle peppers). Play around with it and make it your own.