Why spend two hours making tomato sauce when you’re cooking away its food value? One medium tomato contains almost 40 percent of the minimum daily vitamin C requirement, but heating tomatoes above 70 degrees destroys the water-soluble vitamin.
The solution is to eat your tomatoes in a delicious sauce that requires some chopping and mixing, but no cooking. Just chop and mix the ingredients and pour over pasta or any whole grain.
You say you like to flavor your sauce with Parmesan cheese but are watching your salt and dairy intake? Try a substitute that I call No Harma Parma; it’s a low-sodium and dairy-free mixture of nutritional yeast and nuts. I created it based on a similar product I found in stores but which I found to be too expensive.
Nutritional yeast is a fungi in the edible mushroom family that’s been used to produce beverages and foods for 5,000 years. Inactive nutritional yeast flakes are a great source of protein and vitamins, especially in the B-complex family, and have a cheesy flavor. Add nuts and you won’t miss the Parmesan. No Harma Parma perks up everything from soups and veggies to pasta and grains.
Uncooked tomato sauce
Prep: 10 minutes
Rest: 30 minutes
Servings: 4
Ingredients:
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped, about 1 1/2 cups
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
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1/2 serrano or jalapeno pepper, seeded, minced
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 cup fresh basil, slivered
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Stir all ingredients together in a large bowl; allow to rest for flavors to develop, 30 minutes.
Nutrition information:
Per serving: 86 calories, 74% of calories from fat, 7 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 6 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein 300 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.
No Harma Parma
Prep: 3 minutes
Makes: 1 1/4 cups
Note:
Purchase yeast flakes in natural food stores.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Grind walnuts into tiny bits in a small food processor. Be careful not to grind into a paste. Pour into a bowl. Grind sunflower seeds; add to bowl. Stir in the yeast flakes and salt.
Nutritional information:
Per tablespoon serving: 35 calories, 73% of calories from fat, 3 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 2 g carbohydrates, 2 g protein, 59 g sodium, 1 g fiber.
Kay Stepkin is a vegetarian cooking class instructor and former owner of a vegetarian restaurant/whole-grain bakery. Email her at [email protected].