My favorite veggie-forward pasta sauce
Sweet! Light! Tomato-y!
Just last week, in my CSA reject summer soup recipe, I said I wasn’t going to make food a huge part of this newsletter. And… idk, I still believe that to be true. At least, in intention. (Who knows what this newsletter will look like in a year? I’m winging it!)
But I have another recipe that I am sharing this week.
We get lots of veggies in our CSA, and it can be kind of challenging to use them all up in just seven days. It didn’t take long after subscribing to our farm box for me to get to thinking that it would be good to incorporate some of these delicious fresh veggies into pasta. (Such a unique thought!) Pasta makes up a huge portion of our diet, so why not make it a little more fibrous? Why not add a few micronutrients to our meals?
A couple years ago, adding veggies to pasta basically meant cooking said veggies in a big pot and then adding a jar of ready-made pasta sauce, but eventually I thought it would be both cheaper and better tasting to just make sauce from scratch, since I was already doing the work to cook the veg. So in some ways, this recipe is years in the making.
This version is one of the best I’ve ever made — the result of years of adding (it took me a while to accept adding granulated sugar to a sauce), subtracting (beets just didn’t work! stick to borscht!), and generally tinkering to reach something that made me proud and actually impressed with myself. This sauce is sweet yet refreshing and light. You can add some ground meat if you want, but it also stands up on its own.
Ingredients
¼ cup olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
3 celery ribs, diced
2 zucchini, shredded on the large holes of a box grater
¾ cup good white wine, plus a little glass to enjoy while cooking
6 garlic cloves, minced
28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon each: dried parsley, basil, and oregano
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1-2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Directions
Prepare your veggies. Heat olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot, such as a Dutch oven, over medium heat until shimmering. Add onion, bell pepper, celery, and zucchini. Cook until lots of water has come out of the zucchini and the veggies have shrunken down.
Add the white wine and reduce by about half. Add the garlic, crushed tomatoes, herbs, salt and pepper. Add one tablespoon of sugar. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Allow to simmer for about 30 minutes. Taste and see if you want to add the second tablespoon of sugar.
Simmer for at least another hour.
Serve hot over freshly cooked pasta with parmesan cheese, another drizzle of olive oil, and/or more freshly ground pepper.