Fresh or Freeze Favourite — Olive, Chilli &Tomato Pasta Sauce
When you’re busy and life is hectic, feeding your family and friends can often get pushed down the list of priorities. Even before kids my time was split a million ways. Finding the time to cook fresh food after a long, unresolved day in the office is not my favourite thing to do. So when I can, I think of future Gem. I make something — like this pasta sauce — that I can serve fresh right now, or freeze for some future, exhausted evening.
Ingredients
- 1 red chilli I don’t remove seeds, but you can
- 75 g pitted black olives drained weight
- 2 courgettes
- 3 onions
- 2 carrots
- 2 ribs of celery
- 5 cloves garlic
- 125 g jarred artichoke hearts drained weight
- 2 roasted red peppers
- 1 tbsp dried chilli flakes
- 680 g passata
- Olive oil
Instructions
Preparation
- Finely chop your onion, carrots and celery
- Grate your courgette
- Finely chop your remaining veg: garlic, roasted peppers, black olives, artichoke and chilli. Getting a nice fine chop here is key to a good sauce (although I prefer if the veg is hand-chopped, it can be done in the food processor). I keep my chilli separate until I separated the kid’s portions.
- Put your pan on a medium to high heat and add a good drizzle of olive oil
- If you are serving this as soon as it’s cooked put a pan of water on to boil
Cooking
- Add the soffritto to the pan with the oil and fry until soft, stirring occasionally
- Add the courgette, stir to incorporate and fry for 3-4 minutes until soft
- Add your garlic and stir, leave it to fry for 1/2 a minute
- Next add the roasted peppers, black olives and artichoke. Stir to incorporate and leave it to fry for a good 5 minutes. It’s ready when you start to see the veg turn golden brown
- NB: In the video, I separate a ladle into another pan for the children
- Add the finely chopped fresh chilli to the main dish. In the video I don’t add any fresh chilli in the children’s
- Next, add your dried chilli
- I added a heaped tablespoon for the main dish and a pinch for the children’s
- Add the passata and stir it through. I added around 4 tablespoons to the children’s dish and the rest to the main dish. Add a little water to the empty jar of passata and give it a little jiggle to get the last bits from the bottom of the jar then add to your pan
- Season to taste, reduce to a low heat and cook for at least 10 minutes to allow all the flavours to marry
- Meanwhile, cook your pasta and then drain ready to serve
- Remove the sauce from the heat, fold your pasta through making sure its well coated and serve
Freezing
- Freeze in individual portions. To make things easier I always freeze this pasta sauce in small portions. So much easier to defrost what you need instead of wasting any. Freezer bags are fab and save space, I have some great silicone reusable ones
Video
Notes
It’s not always the top of our list to get home and cook from scratch. When we are running on reserve energy or have to dash back out for a class/catch up/the kids/work drinks… whatever your reality, being busy makes the thought of cooking a lot less appealing. This dish is all about balance and taking back some control.