No Tomato Marinara

Posted by, Paulette

I've been experimenting with this for a couple of months and I'm pretty excited to share.

So what's a girl to do when she can't eat tomatoes and she LOVES spaghetti sauce? 
Find a recipe online for no tomato marinara sauce and tweak it.
I'll bet you didn't even know that you could make a red sauce with no tomatoes, did you? And why would you? Unless you have an allergy to nightshade vegetables. Sounds pretty awful, huh? When I hear the word nightshade I think of deadly nightshade, the poison. 
To some people tomatoes are poison. They get migraine headaches, joint pain, and maybe even hives. That's me...and a couple of my friends too. 
 My favorite food growing up was spaghetti. Mom used Prego in a jar, and ground beef. I learned how to make my own sauce by simmering down tomatoes for 4 hours, and then sauteing up some garlic and onions and whatever else I wanted to throw in there. I've made all kinds of red sauces, and I would eat them for breakfast lunch and dinner!
 And then I started having reactions to foods. And my life changed drastically.  This recipe will fool you into thinking that you're eating tomato sauce if you've been off of tomatoes for a while. 

2-14 ounce cans of pumpkin puree

(the original recipe calls for canned carrots, but, alas, I run into another allergy. So use whatever you want. Sweet potatoes would work well here too)

2 small or 1 large beet(s) peeled

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 celery stalks chopped

1 large onion chopped fine or 1 large fennel bulb chopped fine 

(Again, onion is one of my allergens. So use what you like)

1 whole bulb of garlic peeled and chopped

4-5 large lemons

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, or apple cider vinegar, or red wine vinegar

(the idea is to get a ton of acid into the mixture. All of those will work, just use what you have on hand.)
Sea Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste 
a big handful of fresh chopped basil 
Leave the basil out if you want to use this mock tomato sauce for all kinds of recipes.
some kind of sweetener, I use stevia or honey to taste

Peel and prick your beet, and put it in the microwave to cook until you can easily insert a fork into it. When it's done, throw it into a blender with about 2 cups of water and 1 can of the pumpkin puree.
Heat up a large stock pot and saute the onions (or fennel bulb), celery and garlic. When they are soft, add the juice from 4-5 lemons, and mix in the pumpkin puree and the beet and pumpkin mixture. Stir in the vinegar, salt and pepper and the basil. Add water to make the sauce to the consistency that you like, and then add the sweetener to taste. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Just long enough to meld all those tastes.

This makes a good size pot of sauce. I like to use it over the top of homemade gluten free meatballs. I also add it to soups instead of tomato sauce, and it makes a great gluten free, vege lasagne. 

Last night I made a chili with it from some leftover black beans soup. The soup was really easy.
1 LB black beans
1 bulb of garlic  hand full of dried oregano
1 TBS cumin
enough water to cover, and then more water later.
Sea salt to taste. About 1 tablespoon for the whole pot


This I cooked in the crock pot all day. 
Last night I browned a pound of ground turkey, and a couple of zucchini chopped into 1/2 inch pieces. And then about 3 cups of the sauce.


This is why I make such a large pot. I use little bits of it all week in all kinds of dishes. And I have no allergic reactions!