Thursday 8 September 2011

Creamy Tomato Pasta Sauce

Vegan Creamy Tomato and Basil Pasta Sauce
Served with Spaghetti and my Garlic Bread.

Well, we had quite a bit of leftover Tomato Cream Sauce from the Buckwheat Crêpes recipe and I just had to try it with pasta as it was so good on it's own. Wow. This is a seriously good pasta sauce and will be a staple in our house for sure, even the kid loved it, yay! I'm going to re-post the recipe here as I've increased the quantities for a pasta sauce. The photo there is with parsley but I prefer basil for a pasta sauce and parsley for a crêpe sauce, although both work well. I also took some step by step photos for you here, although it's a dead easy sauce ;-) I've showed this sauce on it's own here so you can see it clearly but any kind of vegetables added would be great.

Sauce is loosely based on/inspired by The Pioneer Woman's "Penne a la Betsy" :-)

Recipe Notes:

♥ I love the coconut milk in this but I have also made this with soy cream, it's just as good.
♥ Don't drink? Simply swap the wine with equal amounts of water. Again, it's still good.
Passata is just sieved crushed tomatoes, I understand this product is harder to find in the US. To help you substitute the ingredients are: tomatoes (99.7%) salt and citric acid and the product is completely smooth. Plain canned tomato sauce can most likely be used in it's place. Make sure the ingredients are as above with no oil, basil,vegetables etc.. and it is very smooth with no seeds, skin or chunks. 
♥ Please don't confuse passata with tomato paste either, I've seen some sites online saying they are the same - they are not....375g of tomato paste would make for an *interesting* sauce, lol.

2013 photo with my new favourite pasta shape - De Cecco Fusilli Lunghi Bucati -5 

Creamy Tomato Pasta Sauce
makes 1/2 litre, good for about 6 servings.

• 1 1/2 Tbsp vegan butter
• 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
• 60g chopped shallots
• 4 -6 cloves garlic, I used 4 large ones, use 6 if they are small, chopped fine
• 150ml white wine
• 375g passata (about 375ml) 
• 200ml full fat coconut milk 
• 1/4 + 1/8 tsp salt
• 6 -8 grinds black pepper
• about a 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (to be honest, I didn't measure here, I just eyeballed it)

First, heat up the butter and olive oil until the butter melts. Add the shallots and garlic and fry until the shallots are soft and transparent, a few minutes should do.


Pour in the wine and bring to a strong simmer, cook until the wine reduces by about a third. Now add the passata, salt and pepper. Stir well, bring to a boil then reduce to low heat, put the lid on and simmer for 20 minutes. Make sure to stir it now and again. It should cook down considerably and be fairly thick.


Pour in the coconut milk, stir and remove from the heat.


Pour it all into a blender and blend until super smooth, it should thicken up and change colour to a glorious orange:


Now simply pour it back into the pot, stir in the basil and or parsley and bring it back up to heat. Check seasoning and it's ready to use!

Fantastic with penne too, or of course, any pasta :-)


Nutritional Information: just the sauce - per 1 serving out of 6
Calories: 151
Protein: 1.3g
Fat: 5.9g
Sat Fat: 1g
Fibre: 0.6g
Carbs: 7g
Sugar: 3.5g
Sodium: 358mg



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10 comments:

  1. I've got an excess of coconut milk at the moment (from overestimating how many pina coladas I'd be serving at a cocktail party!). will have to give this a whirl.

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  2. Excellent! Hope you like it, I'm a little addicted to it right now :-)

    and now I'm craving pina coladas - love them!!

    :-D

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  3. I love the combination of coconut milk and tomato sauce! The sauce has an amazing colour!

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  4. The sauce sounds great and so versatile. I'll give it a try.

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  5. It is so versatile, hope you like it as much as we do! :-)

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  6. Yummy! I tried this the other day and I really don't like coconut. It does have a strong coconut flavor but the creaminess and tomato bit makes it not the focus of your taste buds. Thank you so much for offering up such delicious recipes and I am in Canada so I don't mind having both sets of measurements.
    I am thinking about using this as a pizza sauce because the closes Vegan cheese here is missing the creaminess. I will let you know how it works out, so that maybe it can help others.
    Peace, Love, & Harmony

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  7. Thanks so much :-) Glad you liked it, it would probably make a great pizza sauce too.

    Also, I haven't tried this as I love coconut milk and this sauce as is but soy cream could probably be substituted for the coconut milk if it's not your thing.

    Thanks again for your comments!

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  8. I absolutely loved this! I didn't know what passata was but I looked it up and made my own. I halved the recipe and put it over some brown rice penne pasta. I had a hard time with the measurements (not the fault of the recipe but me) but it was a good challenge and I will definitely be making this again! I can't believe how fast I ate it and I'm still craving some more.

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  9. I'd say that replacing the butter with Coconut Oil would be a better alternative and healthier, this looks awesome though definitely going to try it out! :)

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