Recipe 7 & 8 - Tomato & Basil Sauce and Meahini Pasta

I am definitely enjoying finding grassroot recipes. Its amazing to know that most of the recipes I do find, I have a majority of the ingredients here in my pantry or in the vegetable patch that I have just started growing. At the moment I am using dried herbs instead of fresh as my basil is a bit too small to be ransacked. But hopefully in coming weeks I will be able to use it. Also looking forward to using my lettuces, capsicums, chilli's and tomatoes by end of February.
Hitting two birds with one stone today. Firstly am going to try to make a Tomato and Basil Sauce adapted from the Edmonds Cookbook again and then incorporate it with an adapted Italian Skillet Supper Recipe that I found on ifood.tv . IF the sauce works out! Hopefully this will hide the Zucchini enough that my husband won't notice at all.

Tomato and Basil Sauce

2 tblsp Oil

1 tsp of crushed Garlic (I used garlic from jar- however if fresh add it straight away with the onion)

1 Onion, chopped

400g can Tomatoes

1 1/2 tblsp Cornflour

1/4 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup of water

1 tsp sugar

salt

pepper

1 tblsp freshly chopped Basil

METHOD

1. Heat oil in a saucepan. Add Onion, cook until onion is clear.
2. Puree tomatoes and juice in a blender (I used a stick blender)
3. Combine cornflour and tomato paste in the water.
4. Add the tomato paste combination, pureed tomatoes, garlic and sugar to the saucepan. Bring to the boil. Season with sale and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and stir in Basil.

Meahini Pasta 

(Creative name huh? Meahini -Meat crossed with Zucchini - to hide from my husband!)

500g lean ground Beef
1 Onion, chopped

2 tsps of crushed Garlic

1 tsp dried Basil or Oregano

1 cup Pasta

1 medium Zucchini, peeled and chopped (I used the stick blender for half of it)

To make a sauce for this:

1 1/2 cups tomato pasta sauce

1 1/2 cups chicken stock or beef stock 

(I used the Tomato & Basil Sauce instead)

METHOD

1. In a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, cook ground beef, breaking up with a wooden spoon, for 5 minutes or until no longer pink. Add onion, garlic and basil or oregano; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.
2. Add tomato pasta sauce and stock; bring to a boil. (In my case I added 2 cups of the Tomato & Basil sauce I created.)  Stir in pasta; reduce heat, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in zucchini; cook, covered, stirring occasionally, adding more stock (or adding more sauce) if needed, for 5 to 7 minutes or until pasta and zucchini are tender.

RESULTS:
The Tomato & Basil Sauce came out lovely- but not a deep red that I expected from all other tomato sauces I have brought in the past, maybe due to the amount of preservatives and colour they add .... I used more water than stated in the recipe (about a cup) and so it did get a bit runny, but that's because I was planning to use it for my Meahini. I wouldn't have added the extra water and I am sure it would have been awesome for normal tomato sauce- although not sure how long it would keep for in the fridge...
The Meahini Pasta came out nice enough, although even with all the herbs and my awesome sauce it was quite bland in flavour. I added a bit of Parmesan for a little bit more bang.