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[figment]

After a tiring day at work I came home with a ridiculous quantity of vegetables from our CSA. Yum. So I decided we needed to use much of it up, and I made a pasta sauce that was not too far off from Eggplant Sauce #2 in the Encyclopedia of Sauces for your Pasta. It was really tasty.
Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
about 1/2 pint cherry and grape tomatoes, cut at least in half
4 other tomatoes (various variety heirloom, Roma, etc.), chopped
1/4 C leftover tomato sauce
1 medium-sized eggplant, cubed
2 tofurkey Italian-style sausages
1 T oregano
2 T dried parsley
salt and pepper
olive oil

*note: as you cook this, keep the lid on the pan with the tomatoes as much as possible, to keep the steam in.

Fry onion in olive oil on medium heat until it softens. Add garlic and cook a little longer. Add all tomatoes to pan.
In another pan, fry eggplant in more olive oil until golden. Remove eggplant from pan and add to tomato mixture.
Chop up tofurkey sausages. Fry in oil leftover from eggplant until the sausage is browned. Keep aside.
Add oregano, parsley, salt, and pepper to sauce. If the sauce doesn't look tomatoey enough for your tastes, add some tomato paste, leftover tomato sauce, whatever. (If you use leftover tomato sauce, it shouldn't be a strongly flavored sauce, just something basic.) Simmer for at least 5 minutes, until tomatoes are very broken up and the sauce is, well, saucy.
Add cooked sausages to sauce, and simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve over pasta, maybe topped with a little Parmesan cheese.

Yum.

Now I want to head to bed, but I must solicit some ideas: I have a very large quantity of fresh basil, and an almost-as-large quantity of fresh mint. I can make more pesto and freeze it, but does anyone have other good basil ideas? and mint - I can make mojitos, or I can make tabouleh, but again, any other good ideas?

Mmm. Fresh herbs.

Comments

[jgs42.livejournal.com]

There is a nice tomato and basil recipe in the uncooked sauces section of The Encylopedia of Sauces for Your Pasta. It's basically a pesto recipe, but uses a tomato base instead of an oil base. I don't think it calls for pine nuts, but *I* think they need to go in there.