spaghetti sauce #3

This is my favorite so far, similar to the previous one but adds prunes and green peas to sweeten the sauce.  Without salt and oil, I find I need something to offset the metallic taste of the tomatoes.  Also, this makes a smaller batch, which is good for 2 meals for two people.  This looks more complicated than it is.  After soaking the mushrooms, it only takes about 30 minutes.  And you don't have to follow this exactly, you can subsitute for a lot of the veggies whatever is in your fridge.

Ingredients:

1 16-oz can tomatoes (from the garden, if you are so fortunate)

1/2 onion or leek

about 3 Tbsp pesto (made from basil, garlic, and walnuts) 

OR

some chopped fresh basil (or dried italian seasoning) and chopped garlic cloves (2-4, to taste) and 1 oz walnuts.

1 medium carrot

some dried porchini mushrooms (~1/8 cup)

some fresh mushrooms if you have them (4 oz)  (I didn't today)

some bell pepper (any color), if you have it.  (I had 1/2 red pepper today)

3  prunes, chopped (or was it 4?)

2/3 cup frozen peas

Boil some water (1/2 cup) in a small pot, turn off the stove, soak the porchini mushrooms for about 30 minutes. 

Cook the sauce in two different pans because one will be blended in the blender. So for the blended pan, cook the carrot and most of the onion in some water (or broth--I freeze liquid from when I steam veggies).  You can cut up these vegetables in big pieces because they will be blended. In the other pan, chop up the rest of the onion and start cooking it with the tomatoes and juice. If you don't have the pesto, chop the garlic and add it. Cut up and add the mushrooms and pepper.  Add the pesto or basil and let that cook up.

While this is cooking, you can cook up your spaghetti or substitute. I made whole wheat spaghetti for housemate (boil in water until tender) and made lightly steamed spiralized baked sweet potato for me.  Another time I had it over steamed brussels sprouts. It's also good on broccoli and cauliflower.  It's even good over spiralized potato.  

Once the carrots and onion are done, blend them up in the blender.  If you aren't using pesto sauce, add 1 oz walnuts to the mixture and blend that.   Add that to the other pan.  Add in the frozen peas and that will cool off the sauce nicely.