A Delicious Home Made Pasta Sauce Recipe

Ingredients -

1 Courgette
1 Red Pepper
2 Field Mushrooms
1 Medium Sized Cooking Onion
1 Red Chilli (Green if you want it spicier)
Fresh Basil
Tin of Chopped Tomatoes
Generous Dollop of Tomato Puree
Olive Oil

Method -

- Firstly chop the courgettes and peppers into reasonable sized chunks and dice the onions and mushrooms
- Gently heat a Frying Pan and a Medium Sized Saucepan with a splash of Olive Oil in each
- Fry the Mushrooms and Onions in the pan for about 5 minutes and set to one side
- Add the Courgettes and Peppers into the Saucepan and fry for 5 minutes
- Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and the tomato puree on a medium heat and simmer for 15 minutes until reduced to a thick sauce
- Whilst the tomato mixture is cooking, chop the chilli
- When the tomato mixture has reduced, add the chilli and mushroom and onion mixture and heat through
- Cover sauce and meanwhile chop the basil
- Add Basil to Sauce and serve with Penne or Spaghetti, serve with Garlic Bread if you're feeling extra hungry

This recipe could be used with many different alternative ingredients so alter according to taste

When you've finished your pasta sauce recipe there are a whole heap of toppings you can add. If you are a cheese lover then stacks of parmesan cheese grated very finely over the top is delicious. You could add freshly fried, crispy pancetta or chopped streaky bacon and a grinding of pepper or fresh cut herbs sprinkled over the top.

Carrots are a healthy and tasty addition to add to your pasta sauces, they give a nice little bit of extra veggie freshness to your pasta sauce.

Ensure that you cut them into slices then each slice into quarters. This is to enable them to cook through more easily as they are quite a hard veg and will not be boiled in this recipe and will be fried in the pan along with the other vegetables for the sauce.)

If you're busy at work and can't be bothered to cook late into the evening, then make a huge batch of sauce up and store it in the fridge. Quickly heat it in the microwave for two minutes, stir, heat for a further two minutes and serve. A meal in four minutes can't be bad. (Well 10 if you're boiling some pasta, but come on..... :)

Breaking up big chunks of the basil by hand just before serving and sprinkling it over the top gives a wonderful whiff, that's a treat for your nose.

Double all ingredients, a second tin of chopped tomatoes, a very, very large squeeze of tomato puree and all is good.

However, make sure that you add water when making up this much sauce initially or it will become too thick and stodgy. Just add a little at a time whilst cooking and stir as the tomatoes start to reduce.