Mushroom Bolognese – Vegan!!!

An unusual ingredient in this vegan bolognese…at least for this meat eater… made this very interesting!

This recipe is from Chatalaine ..here is the link to the recipe Vegan Mushroom Bolognese

The interesting ingredient in this recipe is a can of pureed kidney beans. I was not so sure about this.. but decided to give it a try…& we quite liked it. It had an interesting texture but the beans did not impact the flavour.

I made a few changes to the recipe which calls for dry red wine. I do not often have dry red wine open & for sure I did not want to open a bottle that we were not going to drink to make this recipe. You should though!!! Use the wine & then have some with dinner! Anyway, I used some sweet Kosher wine instead.. & it was fantastic. I like adding some sugar to tomato sauce to cut the acidity a bit so I thought the sweet wine would be good! Wine which was called for in the recipe & sweet! I also used the pasta I had in my cupboard which was spaghetti

Also, I have thyme leaves in my freezer.. I can never use a whole package so I toss them in the original package & put them into the freezer to pull out & use when needed! Works great!

My bolognese did not look like the one in the recipe but that usually happens to me.

We really enjoyed this & ate all of the leftovers.

Here is the recipe with my changes.. I did not have an onion so I used onion powder

Ingredients

1 tbsp oil

10 mushrooms….

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

2 cloves of garlic

1 can red kidney beans

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup Kosher Shabbat wine…or dry red wine

1 cup vegetable broth

1 398 ml can of diced tomatoes

5 thyme sprigs

Cooked Pasta…. I used spaghetti *** you can cook the pasta while the sauce is cooking

Method

1. Prepare the vegetables, clean & slice the mushrooms, I thinly sliced the carrot & celery, mince the garlic. Set aside
2. Drain the kidney beans & puree in the food processor until very smooth. If they are too thick the recipe says to add some of the liquid from the can… I did not do this so maybe that is why the texture was interesting… so you can thin the beans out a bit by adding 2-3 tbsp of liquid… I would have used water Set aside
3. Heat the oil in a saucepan big enough to hold all of the ingredients
4. Saute the mushrooms, carrot & celery until the liquid is evaporated & they are dry
5. Add the tomato paste, onion powder, paprika & cinnamon, give it all a good stir
6. Put the pureed beans in & mix
7. Now, add the wine & scrape up the stuck on bits in the bottom of the pan
8. Add the vegetable broth the can of diced tomatoes & thyme sprigs
9. Bring to a boil , then lower to meduim-low the heat & simmer for about 20 minutes until thick..if it is not thick enough you can cook it longer. Stir once in a while
10. Remove the thyme sprigs before serving

Serve over cooked pasta

Enjoy!