More IS Merrier: One-pot pasta sauce makes use of all your veggies

Do you have vegetables? When put that way, it kind of sounds like an ailment: “Help! I’m suffering from acute broccoliosis! My cauliflower is acting up! And my rutabaga is aching like the dickens!” While it’s true that some folks may avoid vegetables as though they’re a disease, I can’t get enough of them. When I was growing up, my parents never hid vegetables in other foods or disguised them with creamy sauces to trick me into eating them, although I was absolutely crazy about creamed peas. They just put a normal-sized serving of vegetables on my plate along with everything else and expected me to eat it and I usually did. My grandmother especially was a proponent of the You’ll Learn to Like It School of Plate Cleaning.

I’m not saying I liked all the vegetables when I was a kid. I most emphatically did not like squash and gourds of all varieties — banana squash, pattypan or summer squash, acorn squash, butternut squash and the especially despised spaghetti squash. It was just so stringy and gross. I thought boiled Brussels sprouts were bitter and I was perpetually sick of green beans because we’d canned enough to last us through the apocalypse and ensuing afterlife. I was fine with raw onions but couldn’t stomach the chunks of boiled onion Dad like to put in stews; he overruled my protests. He may still remember the barfing.

As an adult, the only vegetable that I really don’t like is fried okra, though I will eat pickled okra all day long and most of the night. (My hip friend Hilary turned me on to the pleasures of pickled okra a few years ago. Thanks, Hilary! You’re okrawesome!)

The point is, with very few exceptions, I’m a “more is merrier” type of person vis-à-vis vegetables. I very rarely throw any veggies into the compost bin because everything goes into our tummies. I’ll admit that I’ve let the occasional cucumber go moldy — it happens so fast, doesn’t it? — but any vegetable that’s even remotely edible goes into soups, stews, casseroles and my old standby, pasta sauce.

A dose of summer

I spent a good part of August and September turning all the vegetables from our overproductive garden into jars and jars (and jars and jars) of all-purpose sauce to stash in the freezer. We used veggies that you wouldn’t normally think of putting in pasta sauce, like butternut squash, parsnips, tomatillos, scallions and finely chopped green beans, but when blended together with traditional ingredients like tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and onions, it was simply amazing. I simmered them with olive oil, salt, garlic and an array of fresh herbs, especially basil, since we had so dang much of the stuff. After several hours on the stove, it was like a concentrated dose of pure summer. We kept a few jars for ourselves and gave the rest to my father, in compensation for hauling a fantastically heavy sod cutter to and from our house so that we could break soil for our new garden. He ate every jar of sauce by February, bless his cotton socks.

Since all the summer sauce was gone, I went back to my vegetable crisper and started from scratch. I still had a big bag of frozen shredded zucchini left from last August, so I threw that into a big pot with olive oil, salt, a whole chopped onion, four or five cloves of garlic plus garlic powder, a chicken bouillon cube and dried herbs. I chopped up a big sprig of fresh rosemary and threw it in. I also added a dash or two of nutmeg, which I often sneak into sauces because it acts as a flavor enhancer like salt.

A note on onions versus garlic: Some cooks say that you either make a sauce with onion or you make a sauce with garlic, but not with both, because you want to be able to appreciate the qualities of each without muddling the flavors. I say pish posh. Put it all in there. This isn’t an Italian sauce. It’s a MonikaSauce or a YouSauce.

Next, I added a whole jar of fire-roasted red peppers, diced, plus the liquid. Then I sliced up a box of crimini mushrooms and tossed those into the pot. Then I added two shredded carrots. Before you say, “Carrots in pasta sauce? That’s not Italian!” I will rudely interrupt you and reply, “Si, carrots.” I went to Italy when I was 15 and was introduced to the most delicious sauces I have ever had or will ever have. I give you an eyewitness (mouthwitness?) account that there were carrots in many of the sauces. Never mind how old I am now and how long ago that was. (It was 35 years ago, if you must know, but I still remember the carrots and the cute Italian boys. Mamma mia!)

There’s one vegetable I didn’t use in this sauce, although technically it’s a fruit and not a vegetable: tomatoes. I decided to make this a tomato-free sauce because my daughter can be sensitive to acidic foods, especially overly tomatoey dishes. (But don’t mess with the fresh tomatoes on her BLT, on her burgers or in her tacos. Some things are sacrosanct.) When you are making the sauce, however, you can tomato it up all you want. The “merry” part of this sauce is that it comes together with any combination of fresh, frozen or canned vegetables that you have on hand. It’s a veritable veggie free-for-all!

The sauce had plenty of liquid from the zucchini and the jar of roasted peppers, so I just put the lid on the pot, set the burner to low and walked away for a couple hours to work on this article. (You may choose to add water or stock; just keep an eye on it and adjust as you go.) When I came back into the kitchen to cook the pasta, I took the lid off to reduce the liquid and thicken the sauce. I added about 2 tablespoons of butter. I don’t have a reason. I just like butter.

I served the sauce over sun-dried tomato and goat cheese ravioli, with generous crumbles of feta on top. Even without the tomatoes, this sauce was flavorful. I’m still kind of amazed at how tasty vegetables are. You throw a bunch of random vegetables in a pot with some olive oil and salt and a few hours later you have something sublime. The secret is to let it simmer for a nice, long time so all the veggies get nice and friendly and mellow. And if you want to go Full Vegetarian, you can omit the chicken bouillon and replace it with umami mushroom seasoning, which adds a meaty flavor without adding meat.

I encourage you to raid your fridge and make a sauce with all the vegetables you can find: celery, cauliflower, carrots, squash, zucchini, parsnips, turnips, broccoli, spinach. Rummage through your freezer for peas and broccoli and search your pantry for artichoke hearts and olives. Assemble your merry band of vegetables. Put them all together and let the magic happen. But don’t make your kid eat the boiled onion.