Sweet Potato, Tomato and Courgette Pasta

Hi friends! I hope you’ve had a pleasant end to your year and I wish you a happy new one. Husb and I have been away for a few days together, sans children, which was just an absolute delight, to be perfectly honest. The title of my website is no joke, I promise you. Although it is meant to be humorous, it’s also completely and utterly spot-on when it comes to the need my children create in me to just escape into something in which I find complete and utter solace, and which is mine. That has become cooking in recent years, though has always been something creative. Making that creativity into a business is my dream, even though I’ve been unable to give much time to it in the last month. However, I’ve still been dreaming up and testing recipes for you, and I have so many to share.

Today’s recipe is really so super tasty, yet contains the simplest of ingredients. Before we went away, I went through the veg box in my fridge, and I had in the back of my mind the kind of meal I wanted to cook on our first night home. As the holiday wore on, I knew more and more that I’d want to eat something tremendously healthy at the first possible opportunity, if you know what I mean! Eating out for any sustained amount of time, even if it is only three days in a row, takes its toll on one’s tummy; it is just so impossible not to overeat! It starts with the glorious continental hotel breakfast and continues up to the last sip of green tea after dinner. Every night I went to bed feeling overindulged, and now I have to get back to normal.

I was really pleased with how this recipe met the need to feel as if one had eaten a good sufficiency, and also boasted a delicious taste and texture. The combination of puréed sweet potato with tahini, mixed with an onion, tomato and courgette sauce was mouthwatering, even though this is a basic weeknight family recipe. Anyway, I’ll stop extolling the virtues of my latest recipe (!) and get on with giving you the method so you can make your own version!

Ingredients

• 1 large sweet potato
• 1 courgette
• 1 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• Tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 heaped tbsp tomato purée
• 1 level tbsp tahini
• 1 1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 – 2 tbsp coconut oil
• Drizzle of EVOO
• 170 – 200g wholewheat pasta

(Note: this will make plenty of sauce for two adults and two children. You may have some sauce spare depending on your children’s appetites, so just save this for the following day)

Equipment

Food processor or stick blender, or a potato masher if you have neither of these.

Method

Peel and chop the sweet potato into reasonably small chunks and put in a saucepan with water. Bring to the boil and simmer until soft. Drain and set aside with the lid off to cool a little.

Meanwhile, scoop the coconut oil into a large, heavy-based frying pan and put it on a medium-high heat. Peel and chop the onion and garlic, and chop the courgette by slicing it into approximately 0.75cm slices and then slicing these in half. Add them all to the pan and fry until going golden.

Put the pasta on the hob once you have got the veggies in the pan, bring to the boil and simmer for about 8 minutes until al denté. Drain and set aside.

Once the onion, garlic and courgette is looking nicely browned, add the tin of chopped tomatoes to the pan, along with a swill in the tin of about 100ml tap water, plus the balsamic vinegar, tomato purée, salt and pepper. Mix well together and, keeping on a high heat, cook for about 10 minutes, stirring quite frequently, until reduced and nice and thick. You can leave this on a low heat while you finish preparing the potato.

After draining the potato, put into a food processor along with the tahini, salt and pepper, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Blitz until completely puréed. Scoop all the potato mixture into the pan with the tomato and courgette sauce, then mix together well until thoroughly combined.

Serve the pasta into large bowls and top with the tomato, courgette and sweet potato sauce. Enjoy!

This is such a fab family meal. It’s sweet so children will love it, though I did have to remove the courgettes from both my boys’ sauces, and my older one is not a fussy eater in the slightest. But if your children aren’t keen on courgettes either, you could just not include them, take them out like I did, or substitute them for another vegetable. Aubergine or red pepper would be good options; simply cook in the same way specified, adding your substituted ingredient when you would add the courgette. Obviously you could add these ingredients without removing the courgette too. You could also use butternut squash instead of sweet potato, or even carrot if you have a load of them needing to be used up. The possibilities are endless, so get creative in your kitchen and let me know what you come up with!

Thanks so much for reading,

xxx Sam