October 24, 2011

Counting Chef's Crock-a-touille Sauce {recipe}

Getting more vegetables into your child’s diet is always a challenge. Try this kid tested recipe. This is a wonderful sauce which can be incorporated into your child’s favorite dish where spaghetti sauce or pizza sauce is used.

The Counting Chef’s Crock-a-touille Sauce™
Ingredients: 
  6 Roma tomatoes
  1 small eggplant -trim off top and bottom
  1 small zucchini
  1 small yellow summer squash
  1 green pepper seeded
  4 cloves garlic- chopped
  1 medium onion sliced
  4 tablespoons butter (melted)
  1 ½ tsp brown sugar
  5 tablespoons vegetable oil
  1 tsp. dried thyme
  1 tsp. dried basil

Chop first five ingredients into 1” by 1” cubes. Put into large mixing bowl. Add garlic. Put butter in a frying pan. Add brown sugar. Saute’ until translucent and caramelized. In small bowl put vegetable oil, thyme, and basil. Stir. Pour over mixture in large bowl. Stir to coat. Add caramelized onions.


Put this mixture into a crockpot and add ¼ cup water. Cover. Cook on high heat for 4-5 hours or low for 6 -7 hours.   When done, carefully drain mixture with metal strainer placed over a large bowl. Keep the juice!! Put veggies back in crockpot.


Take reserved juice, put it in a fry pan, cook on stovetop until mixture is reduced to half.  Pour reduced mixture over veggies in crockpot. Stir. Put in bowl to cool. Place in refrigerator until ready for use.


To make Crock-a-touille Sauce™, put in food processor. Process until well blended. This sauce is meant to add nutritional value to your favorite purchased pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce. For each cup of sauce required in your recipe, replace 1/3 of it with Crock-a-touille Sauce. Use this “new” sauce on pizza, noodle hot dish, lasagna, as a dunking sauce for breadsticks, or as sauce for spaghetti.