Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

This is a great way to get more vegetables into your meals without even realising it. In addition to the tomatoes, there’s also a red pepper, courgette, mushrooms, onions, garlic and celery. You can use this sauce as it is, or as a base for bolognese, pizza sauce, anything you’d need a tomato sauce for

This will make quite a lot of sauce, it can be kept in the fridge for about four days, you can alternatively freeze it in portions

You’ll need;

1. One tablespoon oil
2. One brown onion, chopped
3. Three sticks of celery, chopped
4. Three cloves of garlic, chopped
5. 200g/7oz button mushrooms
6. One courgette, peeled and chopped
7. One red pepper, deseeded and chopped
8. Two 400g/140z tins of chopped tomatoes
9. One tablespoon of tomato puree
10. 250ml hot vegetable stock
11. Seasoning – one teaspoon of dried basil, dried oregano and smoked paprika

Method;

• Add the oil into a large frying pan over a medium heat. Next add the onion, celery and garlic, give them five minutes to cook, stirring every now and then
• Next, add the mushrooms, courgette and pepper. Give them another 10 minutes to soften and cook
• Once everything is cooked it’s ready to be blended. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and stock into a large saucepan and use a stick blender (or pop it all into a blender) and blend until smooth
• Return the saucepan to the heat, add the herbs and season with salt and black pepper. Once the sauce has heated up, it’s ready to use, this will only take five minutes or so