Tasty tomato sauce in a hurry with twists!!

Its been a while since i have posted a recipe. But that doesn’t mean that lots of tasty things aren’t being created in this athlete kitchen!!

Here is last nights dinner, I don’t have complete photos because as ever we were hungry, in a hurry and spent the time chatting and connecting rather than photo-snapping our inner.

The recipe is inspired by Cookie and Kate, with tweaks for speed and also to boost our protein intake. Here is Kate’s recipe Baked Goat Cheese with Tomato Sauce and here is what I prepared at lightening speed using the crock pot.

Ingredients

• Decent glug extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 small red onions (2 medium-sized ones will suffice) – roughly chopped
• 2 to 3 cloves of garlic – mashed or finely chopped
• Uncooked spicy Spanish chorizo sausage (optional but adds a tremendous depth of flavour)
• As I didn’t have the fresh basil called for in the recipe I used 1 heaped tablespoon fresh basil pesto
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes/ chilli flakes
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano (more than the original recipe)
• 1 ½ teaspoons red wine vinegar (I didn’t have any white wine vinegar; I am sure that apple cider vinegar will work also)
• 3 cans of good quality crushed tomatoes
• 1 to 2 grated carrots (a handy way to sneak in more veggies and give the dish a nice texture)
• Fresh stock or stock made from a cube/ pod as needed to prevent the texture of the tomato sauce from being too thick
• Sea salt to taste
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Optional beans – I had some cooked soya beans to hand so added these, red kidney beans or chick peas or lack beans etc will all work wonderfully. These can be pre-cooked or from a can.

Instructions

1. Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil.
2. Add the chorizo and spices/ herbs and cook for a few minutes.
3. Add the basil/ basil pesto, tomatoes, grated carrot, vinegar and turn the crock pot onto a low heat such as 120 C and allow to simmer for 1 to 2 hours. Add more stock if your sauce is too thick. Towards the end of cooking add your beans to heat them through the sauce.
4. Voila!

Serving suggestions:

Garron ate this on cooked polenta, I had this on the side of a fresh salad (I had a training day off and wasn’t mega hungry for carbs).

Serving options include pasta, edamame pasta, rice, brown rice, quinoa, couscous, mashed potato or as we did, quick cook polenta. Steamed veggies will work well with this and some chopped basil or parsley will add some vitamin K and magnesium clout when serving. 

Enjoy, apologies I don’t have any fancy photos but life rarely works the photo-shopped way!

Love, Andrea