Hello Hive friends.
I cannot say, it's been a hectic holiday. We only have two family members in town, which are my partner's parents. We have no friends by choice. No obligations except to make sure my partner's parents are getting their needs met. They are in there 80's.
My one adult child lives on the other side of the country. We haven't seen each other for holidays, since she was young. We also have no job. The only stress is being trapped indoors because of the ungodly weather. It's -13 with temperatures to drop further.
Here in Canada, the prices of produce and groceries are sky high. If I go to different stores, I can get whatever is on special or marked down. This can really help keep the costs down. Unfortunately all of the produce is imported. It's picked too soon and shipped.
The closest store to me has insane high prices. This leads to marking down items that haven't sold and are getting to the end. I always get my tomatoes from there. They have some blemishes and are a little soft in places. It makes for a great addition to a sauce.
I usually blend them and keep some in the freezer for future usage.
There were also expired cans of tomatoes on sale, I knew it was time to make a pot of pasta sauce. Besides, I managed to find a deal on pasta a while ago, that I couldn't resist. This has prompted me to make plant based versions of Italian style dishes.
Tomato mushroom ragu
600g fresh tomatoes
2 cans 540ml tomatoes
1 can 398 ml Italian tomatoes
1 can 156 ml tomato paste
500g mushrooms
300g chopped onion
80g garlic
1tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
1tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp cane sugar
1/2 cup red wine (optional)
Salt to taste
Mushrooms are usually between 2 and 3 dollars for a small container. I found these in the markdown bin for a dollar each. They were perfectly good without any blemishes. I got 2 packages.
I added thyme, oregano and black pepper, to keep it simple. I decided to add a little red wine to it. I suppose if I had dried basil, I would have added that as well but I only use it when the dish is Italian themed like this. I usually don't bother buying it.
The onions were cooked until translucent, then the garlic added. I like a fair bit of garlic so there was almost a whole bulb.
I added the mushrooms and tomato paste.
The tomato paste should be cooked well before the other tomatoes go in. The taste of raw paste can spoil everything.
I opened the cans and mixed the fresh tomato puree together then added that to the pot.
The tomatoes and wine were acidic enough to be balanced out with a little cane sugar.
I let the pot simmer for a while stirring every so often. Ragu usually has meat in it, and is slow cooked for quite a while.
For the "no meat" balls, I used soy nuggets. This was a first, and an experiment.
I don't often use these but I am well aware that they don't have anywhere near the texture of meat.
After soaking them in boiling water for around 10 minutes, I let them cool then squeezed out the water as best as I could.
I no longer have a food processor. Both of them finally broke. I am left with a bullet blender. It makes it difficult to grind things in large amounts.
I had to chop the nuggets into smaller piece and add it small amounts at a time to get a course grind like ground meat.
It worked quite well but I was still wondering if I could get them to stick into balls.
I wanted to avoid using flour or bread crumbs, to keep them gluten free, since they were going with wheat pasta. In the past when I ate meat, I did add bread crumbs and eggs.
I found some alternatives in my cupboard. At this point I didn't know if it would work.
"No meat" balls
2oog soy nuggets (unsoaked)
1oog cooked onions
3og cooked garlic
30g raw garlic
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup potato starch
1/2 cup tapioca starch
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup fine cornmeal
1/4 teaspoon liquid smoke
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion powder
Salt to taste
The cooked onion and garlic helped to bind the mixture.
I added some of the dry ingredients first. I wasn't sure if the liquid would be too much or too little.
I added the liquids little by little mixing thoroughly.
The mix was finished off with the rest of the dry ingredients. It seemed to be the right amount of everything measured.
The best thing about plant based things like this, is you can taste it without being cooked. I added the desired amount of salt.
They were carefully rolled into balls and set aside while I heated a pan with oil.
They were in the pan to brown on the outside.
They were then cooked in some of the sauce. I didn't put all of the balls in the sauce. There were 2 dozen all together so they were put in the freezer for the future.
While the balls were simmering in the sauce, I boiled some penne to top with sauce and "no meat" balls.
I must admit, they worked out great. I guess a meat loving Italian would probably cry. I haven't had a real meatball in 20 years or so. This was perfect for me. I would do this again for sure.
In the past, Italian pasta that I have had, usually came with bread or garlic bread. I had some long buns, that were perfect so I made garlic bread for cleaning up the sauce.
There was some vegan parmesean left from before so this was grated on top. It doesn't have a strong flavour like the real deal that I remember, but it has a similar taste.
Thank you for visiting and have a great day.
Photos taken with a Nikon D7500