Relatively quick mushroom pasta sauce for broke college students

Go-to for meal prepping pasta sauce, can be frozen and reheated in the microwave. Rich, made with cheap and available ingredients, can be made even easier by an immersion blender or just a blender. Hearty and quenches the thirst I personally have for my mums tradiotional slow cooked ragu which i simply cant afford to make nor do I have the time or pots to replicate.

Great

% Daily Values based on a 2,000 calorie diet

Step 1

What you need is about 400 grams of mushrooms (i used chestnuts), celery (i used 2 stems), one large white onion, one large carrot, one tin of good quality tomatoes (i used cherry but sauce or passata is ok), extra virgin olive oil (important), red wine, and fresh herbs (i used thyme and dried rosemary) and tomato paste.

Step 2

First chop all the vegetables finely (took 2 hours), uniting carrot celery and onion and keeping mushrooms separated. Freeze all but 2 or 3 tablespoons of the carrotetc mix (hereinafter soffritto) and then in a large pot go with a healthy couple rounds of olive oil and the tablespoons of soffritto mix, medium high and stir

Step 3

When the onion gets a bit trasparent, add about 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and mix until everything is nice and orangy. Add the mushrooms, toss a bit, then a couple healthy glugs of red wine, let it simmer on medium for a while until it starts shriking. When they have significantly less volume, crank it up to high to boil off the liquid. Once they are more or less dry, ass your tomato tin and then put some water in the empty tin and put it in the pot, mix well and simmer at medium high with lid, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesnt stick. Then add another glug of oil, a pinch of sugar, salt to taste, and your herbs (and black and or red pepper if u feel daring....). This is when you add the optional finely chopped walnut

Step 4

Let it simmer until the tomato doesnt taste acid and everything has a less watery look, should be thick and coat a spoon, as well as stick to a noodle well. Taste to see if you need to add anything, let it rest so it soaks up, and enjoy