I try as much as possible to serve vegetable and fruit with my kids’ meal, but sometimes I just want a simple meal. To achieve the simple meal I throw vegetable into a sauce like this and make fruit juice to go with. I am not an advocate of hidden veggie for 3 years upward but for picky eater mamas just need to hide the veggies.

This delish sauce is versatile, you can use it in different ways. Sometimes I mix it with left-over rice to make a new dish, we use it for egg, potato. spaghetti and lots more. You can add any veggie of choice to this sauce, slice your ugu(pumpkin leave), spinach, carrot, cabbage, peas, green beans and more any veggie of your preference. This recipe is suitable from 1 year upward because of the acidity in tomatoes.

SEE RECIPE NOTE FOR SOME TIPS

INGREDIENTS

• 500-gram mincemeat 
• 2 bell pepper (tatashe)
• 3 big chili (bower)
• 1 habanero pepper
• 4   red tomatoes
• 135-gram tomato paste (tin tomato)
• 2 onions
• 5 floret broccoli 
• 2 stick celery
• 2 carrots
• 5 cloves of garlic
• thumb size ginger 
• 1 1/2 tablespoon spice 
• 1 teaspoon salt or more 
• 1/4 cup oil

METHOD

1. Cut the peppers, garlic, ginger, and vegetable into cubes and blend
2. In a saucepan add a diced onions and fry till translucent 
3. Add the beef to the onions and cook it till brown, while browning the meat fry the tomato paste in a little oil
4. Add the fried tomato paste and blended pepper to the meat, mix the meat with sauce together to incorporate
5. Add about 100ml water to the sauce to reduce the acidity in the tomato 
6. Add the spice and salt
7. Leave the sauce to cook on medium heat for 20 mins, reduce the heat and cook for 40/45 min on a very low heat.
8. Bring out of heat let it cool and use as desired.

RECIPE TIP:

1. If you don’t have mincemeat you can dice meat or chicken and grind it in a food processor or spice grinder.
2. For my spice, I use oregano, thyme, curry, black pepper, and turmeric.
3. Add more salt if need be
4. You use any vegetable for this recipe.
5. You can boil your vegetables before blending so that you don’t strain your blender