Vegan spaghetti sauce

 This dish was and still is a favourite with the whole family, so close on thirty people, and all our friends love it too.

My lovely mum spent her life cooking for three hungry men, she was a great cook so pies, cakes and all manner of dishes came our way and from an early age my brother and I were taught how to cook. We would spend Sunday mornings beating butter and sugar to make cakes and learning how to make and roll pastry as well as making lunches and dinners. In those days the man worked and the woman managed the home, she was determined to change all that by teaching her two burly sons to cook and keep house so we would not be a burden on our future partners

This was in the late fifties and the sixties so was mostly traditional Yorkshire cooking, mums birthplace, so meat, eggs, butter, cream and milk and any other animal products you could think of but by the time I reached my late teens I was becoming a vegetarian and after a year or two became a strict vegan for many reasons but mainly out of my compassion for all life. I have spent a lot of time studying nutrition and vegan food so made vegan versions of the traditional dishes that I had been taught and that we all know. This spaghetti dish is one of those adapted recipes from my mother which was taught to her by an Italian sister in law before I was born. My mum used to make it by frying onions garlic and bacon cut into squares with a pair of scissors then when it was all going brown in went tinned toms and lots of tom paste.

Here is my version.made to be as balanced and nutritional as possible so extra veggies as in red and green peppers and tofu which as a pulse (soya bean) combines with the grain of wholewheat pasta to form a first class protein. Also generous amounts of garlic, good olive oil and herbs.

 The recipe is simple and quite quick if you need a fast meal for four to six people, ingredients are:

 A generous amount of olive oil and then a bit more

2 large or 3 medium onions

1 red and 1 green pepper (capsicum)

10/12 cloves of garlic crushed

Italian seasoning which is a dried  mix of herbs that go well with most italian/mediteranean dishes, I like the Sainsburys version but even a few teaspoons of dried oregano will do if you have not got it

2 tins of peeled plum chopped tomatoes,  Even an equivalent amount of passata would do

About half a tube of tomato paste

about half a large packet of tofu cubed roughly or more to your taste. I have used a handful of hazelnuts when I had no tofu and it worked really well

Dice the onions and peppers as small as you can and fry on a high heat in the olive oil, I use a saucepan instead of a frying pan because I find it easier to stir when all the ingredients are in, add salt and black pepper to your taste Fry until golden and reduced stirring regularly.

Add  the garlic and stir for a minute or two then about 3 teaspoons of the herbs and stir. Next add tomatoes and tom paste and bring up to a boil stirring now and then so it does not burn. Lower heat add cubed tofu and simmer for about 10 minutes stirring now and then, adjust seasoning if needed. Serve with wholewheat spaghetti, vegan cheese, previous blog, sprinkled on top and Gomasio, sesame salt, previous blog.

 

Please remember this blog is called Adrian's vegan RAMBLINGS, thank you.