VEGAN Spaghetti and 'cheat-balls'

A timeless classic. The tomato sauce is sooo rich and flavoursome and together with the pasta and meatballs, this is a real winner for any day of the week. Plus, this is a great recipe for hiding veggies in so you don't even know you're eating them!

Ingredients:

• Linguine / spaghetti / pasta of your choice

• 1 punnet chestnut mushrooms

• Vegan meatballs (I used Richmond)

• 1 400g tin cherry tomatoes (chopped tomatoes would be fine too!)

• 3tbsp tomato puree

• 1 carrot

• 1 white onion

• 1 celery stick

• 2 cloves garlic

• Glug of white wine

• 1tbsp balsamic vinegar

• 1tbsp marmite

• 1tbsp dried mixed herbs

• 1tsp olive oil

• Optional: fresh basil to shred on top

• Optional: nutritional yeast to sprinkle on top

Method:

1. Start by finely chopping your onion, carrot and celery.

2. Pop a saucepan over a medium heat and add 1tsp of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add them to saucepan and fry over a medium heat for 5 minutes.

3. Whilst that’s sweating, pop your mushrooms in a food processor and blitz until you have something that looks like mushroom ‘mince’ - pop this to the side, we’ll come back to it later.

4. Add the garlic to the onion, carrot and celery and fry for a further minute.

5. Turn the heat up and add a glug of white wine, allow the alcohol to burn off for about 1-2 minutes.

6. Turn the heat back to medium and add your tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, marmite, balsamic vinegar, dried herbs and veggie stock. Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

7. This gives you enough time to pop your ‘cheatballs’ in the oven.

8. Meanwhile, put your blitzed mushrooms into a saucepan and fry them off over med/high heat (add salt!).

9. Pop your pasta on to boil.

10. Add your cooked ‘cheatballs’, blitzed mushrooms and drained pasta to the tomato sauce - save some of your pasta water back, add it to the sauce to loosen it.

11. Add shredded basil and nutritional yeast (if using), salt and pepper. Enjoy!

Love, Soph x

I hope you love this recipe. Please let me know if you make it and tag me/send me any pictures of your creations! (@slaudus_eats) Feedback is always appreciated!