Showing posts with label alternative spaghetti sauce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alternative spaghetti sauce. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Everything-Free Spaghetti Sauce experiment

I have a problem with spaghetti sauce. I love it, but it does not love me. First I learned that garlic is not my friend. Then I realized that tomatoes and tomato sauce do not agree with me. But I really miss spaghetti, so I've made it from time to time and just suffered the consequences. Last night, I tried an alternative, based on something my dad tried years ago.

My dad and my middle sister are both inventive cooks. They like to take a basic food concept and tinker with it. For example, my sister took the idea of dishes like sweet-and-sour chicken, where you have fruit and meat with the sauce, and adapted it. She did sweet-and-sour lamb with strawberries; same idea, but different ingredients. And it turned out really well. Our dad does the same kind of thing with food concepts. Years ago, when I was probably in high school, Dad experimented with spaghetti sauce. It is based on a vegetable puree (tomato sauce) so he wondered how it would work to use a different vegetable. I remember that he made a sauce based on pureed cooked carrots. I'm so glad I remebered that!

**Last night, I wanted to make spaghetti for the family, but I'm a little tired of the price I pay for eating the tomato sauce. I made a regular meat sauce for them, cooking the ground beef (the healthy kind, from our local meat shop), then adding seasonings. Before I added the tomato sauce to the meat, I took out a bit of meat for my experiment. I cooked some diced carrots- just boiled them in water. Then I put the carrots in the blender with some of their cooking water, and blended it till I had a nice puree. I put the carrot puree back in the pan with the meat I'd saved out for myself, and heated it together for just a few minutes. I put my carrot sauce over my brown-rice (gluten-free) spaghetti, and had green beans on the side. It was a little different, but by the time I was finished eating I really liked it! And no consequences to suffer!

I think that if I simmered the sauce longer after adding the seasoned meat, and maybe also seasoned the carrots while they cooked beforehand, the flavor would be richer. I'm dairy free, so I don't know how well Parmesan cheese would go with this. Sometimes I sautee sliced black olives briefly (just till they're warm), in olive oil and Italian seasoning, as an addition to spaghetti. I think that would make a nice boost to my carrot-sauce flavor also. The flavor of the green beans went well with my experimental sauce. I imagine broccoli would, too.

I'm so happy to have found a workable alternative to put on pasta!