My favourite dish as I was growing up was definitely my mom’s spaghetti with tomato sauce which even though was so tasty, I now know that it didn’t provide much goodness for my gut’s health.
I challenged myself many times to make a meat-free version of spaghetti with more nutrition and much flavour and I think this is the best recipe I could come up. Please note that it has much more ingredients than the initial recipe, but it delivers over 50% of our daily fibre needs.
Base
- 200 gr whole-wheat spaghetti
Salsa
- 1 chopped onion
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 stick celery. Chopped
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 1 courgette, chopped
- 1 red pepper, chopped
- 150 gr mushrooms, chopped
- 2 Tbls olive oil
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- ½ tsp fresh or dried oregano
- 400 gr tin tomatoes or fresh
- 400 gr cooked and drained green or red lentils
- 2-3 sundried tomatoes chopped
- 2 Tbls tomato paste
- 2 Tbls capers
- 300 ml vegetable stock
- Salt and pepper
1. Place all the fresh veggies into a blender ( onion, garlic, celery, carrot, zucchini, pepper, mushrooms) and just blitz to to be finely chopped.
2. In a large saucepan add the olive oil, bay leans, cinnamon, oregano and the veggies to saute for maybe 10 min or until all water has evaporated
3. Add the lentils, tomato paste, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes and capers on the pan and add the vegetable stock. Add salt and pepper and simmer for 25 min with the lid off. Remove bay leaves and cinnamon sticks
4. Half way you are cooking the salsa start cooking the pasta.
5. Drain the pasta and stir in the sauce.
6. Add hallumi or parmesan or more black pepper.
