The accidental fauxlognese

This isn't quite a "what not to cook" post but it came awfully close. Sunday evening found me too lazy to chop vegetables for a pasta sauce. (I know - me, lazy? Shocker.) I decided to save time and effort by using my food processor to mince them. Now this might have worked if I'd tried processing each veg individually, but I was too lazy to even do that. Why chop them up one at a time, when I could cram all of them into the processor and finish them off in one fell swoop! As anyone who has used a food processor will understand (or anyone but me, prior to Sunday*), this turned out to be a bad idea. The bottom layer of vegetables quickly turned to mush, while the upper layers merely became dizzy from all the spinning. Now I'm used to vegetables that have been chopped to inconsistent sizes, but pureed mushrooms combined with 2-inch chunks of onion and carrot is well outside even my tolerance. At that point there was no recourse aside from turning the entire bowl of veggies to pulp. (I'm skipping the part where I cursed a lot - technically speaking that's not part of the recipe, but it did make me feel better.) I ended up adding another onion (hand-chopped :-) to give the sauce a modicum of texture.

The result? Well, the flavour turned out to be acceptable - although the Yves fake ground beef seems inferior to the brand that I found at Whole Foods in TX - and the fine texture was well-suited for smearing on pita pizzas or topping a mound of spaghetti squash. So ultimately the whole pureed vegetables thing didn't entirely ruin this sauce.

So, would I make it again? I'd really like to say no, but those lazy Sundays aren't exactly uncommon around here...

* I reserve the right to make this same mistake in the future.

The accidental fauxlognese

5 enormous mushrooms, quartered
1 onion, quartered
1 large carrot, quartered
4 cloves garlic
handful Italian parsley
1 small onion, chopped fine and evenly - seriously, textbook quality (no, not really)
olive oil
dried basil, oregano, chili flakes, freshly ground pepper
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 package Yves Italian ground soy product
handful fresh basil, chopped
salt to taste

Ram the first five ingredients into the food processor. Pulse until mixture turns into pulp. Saute the chopped onion in olive oil until the onion begins to soften. Add the seasonings, stir until fragrant, then poor in the veggie pulp. Let cook for a while, stirring often. Add the tomato sauce, and let simmer for a while. When close to being done, stir in the fake ground beef and simmer for a few more minutes. Add salt to taste, stir in the fresh basil, and ta-da - fauxlognese.