Cornerstone sauce

This is a brilliantly versatile sauce and is used in a range of dishes that I'll post. You can use it for pasta, pizzas, or in meaty dishes such as pies, so I suggest you get a bucket of it cooked up and freeze it in small portions to be used when needed. You can take them straight out the freezer and add to the cook pot if that’s the way you’re using it or defrost in the microwave to be spread over a pizza base. The addition of the fruit in this recipe makes it nice and sweet and a hit with the kids!

As Finn's default response to anything that looks as though it has tomato in it is "Urrgg, its yucky", I tend to name the sauce according to the dish I'm using it in, i.e. pizza sauce, pasta sauce etc.  So long as its not called 'Tomato sauce', he wolfs it down! 

Ingredients

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 empty can of water
100 grams of chopped onion
1 tbsp cooking oil
100 grams of courgette
60 grams of mushrooms
1 green pepper

1 punnet of red berries (depending on which type of berry you use, you may need to pass through a sieve (i.e. if using raspberries)

150 grams of beetroot
150 grams of cauliflower
50 grams of celery
2 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp of tomato ketchup or puree   

How to do it

1. Chop the onion but don’t worry about it being too small 
2. Put in a big saucepan with the oil and cook for a minute or two 
3. Chop all the veg into fairly small pieces 
4. Add the tinned tomatoes, water, courgette, mushrooms, green pepper, 
    berries, beetroot, cauliflower, celery, Worcestershire sauce and tomato 
    ketchup to the saucepan 
5. Cook over a low to medium heat for 20 to 25 minutes until everything is 
    soft
6. Blend with a hand blender and that's it!