Vegan MoFo Day 10: Salteado

Today's recipe comes from The Cookbook for People Who Love Animals (1981). This book is already completely vegan, but I made a few recipe edits to suit myself.

Start by making their Quick Tomato Sauce:

2 T olive oil

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 large onions, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

2 green bell peppers, chopped

1 t salt

1 t oregano

1 t garlic powder

1 t paprika

12 ripe tomatoes (or, in my case, four 14.5 oz cans of fire roasted tomatoes)

4 T tamari or soy sauce

2 T sorghum molasses

2 T arrowroot

Heat the oil, and add garlic, onions, celery, pepper and seasonings. Saute for 7-15 minutes, until everything is softened. Put the tomatoes in a blender with the tamari, sorghum, and arrowroot. You may have to do this in batches. Add to the pot, and simmer, uncovered, for an hour.

This makes more than you need, so you have extra for spaghetti or pizza. You could use jarred sauce, but this is quite tasty, and I LOVE that they use sorghum in it. Now, proceed to the salteado:

4 c tomato sauce (above)

1/4 c olive oil

1 small onion, diced (I left this out, as I felt there was already plenty of onion in the sauce)

1 c green peas

1 bay leaf

1/2 t granulated garlic

1/4 t basil

8 oz tofu, diced (I left this out - see below for my alternative)

Combine all ingredients, and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Serve over boiled potatoes.

When making this, the idea of plain cubed tofu floating around in the salteado just didn't do it for me. I saw a recipe for tofu bacon on another Vegan MoFo blog, and decided that this would be a considerable improvement. I made a double batch of the tofu bacon, chopped it, and served it on top of (instead of stirred into) the salteado. Very nice.

While this was a bit complex, I definitely plan to make it again!