Tuesday 26 January 2016

Recipe: Roast vegetable pasta sauce

Reading back through some of my draft posts, I realise I never posted this one. And quite frankly, it's a keeper because it's simple, adaptable and tastes amazing. I mean, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but it is. Even Jimmy and Ellie will gobble this stuff down, so it's kid friendly as well.

I use it as a pasta sauce, but really, you could use it for a whole range of things - a base for lasagna, or the beginnings of a truly delicious soup come to mind.
Roast vegetable pasta sauce
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Ingredients
  • assorted vegetables to roast - in this version I've used tomatoes, eggplant, carrot, celery and the sad looking mushroom and capsicum pieces left in the crisper drawer
  • olive oil 
  • balsamic vinegar
  • garlic cloves
Method
  1. Cut all of the vegetables to a uniform size and put into a baking pan. Drizzle over the olive oil and some balsamic vinegar to taste, then roast until everything is collapsed.
  2. Put your pasta on to cook, and while it's cooking away;
  3. Heat up a fry pan and add a bit of olive oil and some minced up garlic. While that's getting nice and fragrant, process the roast vegetable mixture until it's at your desired consistency.
  4. Add the roasted vegetable mix into the garlic and heat it up. Check for seasoning and when the pasta is cooked, add it to the pan so it gets lovely and coated. You may need to add a little bit of the pasta water if your sauce is too thick.
Notes
  • This is a very forgiving recipe. I use it to avoid wasting vegetables that have seen better days - whatever I have in the fridge really, as long as there are some tomatoes in there to tie it all together. It's also handy for using up loads of home grown veggies in a tasty way.
  • Because it's so easy to make, I often make up the tray of vegetables and roast it while I have the oven on cooking something else. I then let it sit and marinate in the fridge overnight (because I find it develops better flavours) and then whizz it up and finish the sauce the next night for a speedy dinner.
  • I leave it a bit chunky but you could always process it more if you'd like a smoother sauce. Sometimes I add olives or capers before serving instead of using any salt. I like to tear fresh basil leaves and add just at the end too.
  • This recipe freezes beautifully too and makes for speedy dinner preparation when required!
How do you make your favourite pasta sauce?

2 comments:

  1. This does sound like a winning staple - I love how versatile it is and how you can use up lots of wilting vegetables if needed!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Totally keeping this one up my sleeve :)

    ReplyDelete

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