Food That Doesn't Hurt

OK, so that’s a rubbish name for it, but if you’re looking for a healthy equivalent of your good old favourite spag bolg, then this is it.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil for cooking
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
• 4 carrots, finely chopped
• 1 pack of mushrooms, finely diced
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, or use the equivalent in fresh tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
• fresh oregano, about 3 tablespoons
• fresh basil
• freshly ground salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Well, you may have picked this up by now, but for this recipe to really work, you must chop all the vegetables very finely. Finer than I’ve done in the picture – I was still a bit scared of my new knife set at that point It’s so that the bolognaise sauce sticks to the pasta the way a normal meat sauce would.
2. Gently heat the olive oil, add the onions, and fry gently until starting to soften. Add the garlic for about a minute.
3. Add the celery and carrot and cook gently for about another 10 minutes until they are soft.
4. Add the mushrooms and cook until the juices run.
5. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and oregano. I’m not normally a herb snob, but really, for this to taste amazing, you need to use fresh oregano, the dried stuff just doesn’t cut it. I don’t even bother making this dish unless I have fresh oregano. It makes all the difference.
6. Bring to simmering point, and cook until the vegetables are soft and you have a wonderful textured sauce. Probably about 10-15 minutes.
7. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and dollop a large spoonful onto some spaghetti, topped with basil.

I used spelt spaghetti for this, which is great stuff. If you really desire a more meaty texture, you can add soya mince to this – it works well.