While the use of THE COOKS’ BIBLE as a foundation for my complete cookbook exercise had a great start, a trip to a bookstore today led me to a new foundational book, The Chubby Vegetarian: 100 Inspired Vegetable Recipes for the Modern Table.
My method of choosing recipes is to flip through the book and choose one, but once it is done, I will only return to it if we are having company over!
Choice Number One: Spiralized Sweet Potato Noodles with Mushroom Bolognese Sauce, a dish that ticks all the boxes for me. Noodles. Mushrooms. Tomatoes. Spice. There is no combination of those ingredients that is not good! Well, within reason.
Gadgets: Spiralizer and wand mixer. The book recommends using the largest setting for the noodles, and at first blush they look too big. 5.5mm was the largest I had.
I don’t want to steal the recipe from the book and plop it here, so I modified it, just as I did when I made it.
Sweet Potato Noodles with Bolognese Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/2 large sweet potato
- One large yellow onion
- 6 crimini mushrooms
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- Pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
- 6 diced cherry tomatoes
- 2 eight ounce cans of pureed tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons finely minced garlic
- Grate Perorino Romano cheese on top of prepared dish.
Instructions
Dice the entire onion as small as you can, within reason. Do the same thing with the mushrooms.
In a large pan, large enough for all the ingredients, heat about 1/4 cup of olive oil.
Once the oil starts shimmering, add all the onions. Saute and stir until the onions are browned.
Using an immersion blender, puree the onions. No need to be compulsive about it, as a few stray larger onions is actually desired.
Add the mushrooms and cook until most of the water from the mushrooms goes away.
Add all the other ingredients, except the cheese and sweet potato. Simmer on low heat for 20 minutes.
Spiralize as many sweet potato noodles as you’d like. For me, the 1/2 of a very large sweet potato served two hungry people. That will leave enough sauce for at least another two servings.
Place “noodles” into a pot of boiling salted water. The amount of time will be impacted by how big you make the “noodles”. I used a 5.5mm cutting plate and found the noodles needed a minute to minute and a half. At that time they will be crunchy, but cooked.
Place noodles into a bowl and add enough sauce to completely coat the noodles. It should be quite thick.
Place noodle/sauce mixture onto plate and grate cheese on top.
Enjoy
