Sneaky Ragù

      Last week, I tried a dehydrated "Lazy Food" one dish dinner, a Sicilian ragù with chickpea-flour rotini and vegetable-protein "meat" in a thick tomato sauce with peas.  I added a dab of real Italian sausage and a couple of sliced fresh mushrooms, which is an easy cheat to liven up this kind of thing.

     It wasn't bad, not at all, filling and a little spicy.  The chickpea rotini were surprisingly good; the dried peas...well, they never quite recover the original texture; they were a weak point.

     But as I ate, I thought about how I'd make a richer version.  The wheatless pasta worked, so I figured I'd keep that.  A little spiced tomato sauce with garden vegetables, a little ground beef and/or Italian sausage, canned or frozen peas.  But the sauce?  That was tricky.

     Ideally, such sauces are best made from scratch and simmered for hours.  I rarely have hours.  It was thicker than canned spaghetti sauce, and spicier, with a different flavor profile from Arrabbiata.  Elements of it were familiar....  There had to be some way to fake it!

     You can buy Moroccan Shakshuka sauce in little bottles; it's typically used to poach eggs* for a dish of the same name.  It's like a thicker version of the full-vegetable Italian tomato gravy, with a North African spice profile.  A bottle of that and a like-sized (small) bottle of Michael's of Brooklyn combine like someone hoped they'd get together, and when simmered with meat, mushrooms and peas, it's pretty much the same flavor as the dehydrated stuff, only better, and thick enough to stand a spoon in.

     Alas, the brand of chickpea rotini I bought took awhile to cook up in the sauce, and never had quite the right texture (there are a lot of different kinds).  But the end result was good nonetheless.

     I served it for dinner tonight.  Tam's not a big fan of peas, and wondered if zucchini might not be a good replacement for the peas and noodles.  I'm pretty sure it would work just fine, since zucchini is used in many closely related dishes.  So we'll try that next time.  It's still a low-prep, quickly-cooked meal, and a change from the usual.
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* There's an Andalusian version that adds both chorizo and serrano ham to the spicy tomato sauce and eggs, which sounds like an amazing breakfast to me.  The Moroccan tomato sauce is less expensive than the brands of Italian-style sauces I like, and can be thinned down to the same consistency with a little added plain tomato sauce.  I keep small cans of the plain stuff on hand all the time -- it's useful and stores well.