Mr Messy by Roger Hargreaves

My eldest son seems to be going through a growing phase right now.  His pants are all too short and his tummy always seems to be hungry!  He prowls around the fridge and lurks in the pantry.  If you start to get a pan out of the cupboard its like a dinner bell going off and he sprints from his room to see whats cooking! 

I have a great collection of foolproof, fast, easy and on hand recipes that I can rustle up in quick time when the children seem to go from OK to starving in 2 seconds flat! This tomato sauce is the base for many of those recipes.  Simply stir it through pasta and top with cheese, use it as a great pizza sauce, dip your chips (fries!) in it, pour over chicken and bake or just cook it up with a little rice to make a hearty tomato and rice soup sprinkled with Parmesan and black pepper.  Ten minutes to whip up a batch and store it in a jar in the fridge or freeze it for when time is tight and life is messy.  This sauce never lets me down.

WHAT YOU NEED

400 g tinned crushed/chopped tomatoes
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 clove of garlic crushed
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
2 spring onions, chopped
squirt of balsamic syrup or a splash of balsamic vinegar
pinch of sugar
olive oil
sea salt & black pepper

WHAT YOU DO

Heat a little olive oil in a pan and add the garlic and spring onions and fry for 2 minutes.
Add the crushed tomatoes, chilli, fennel seeds, sugar, balsamic and allow to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Pop a lid or splatter guard on your pan as volcanic bubbles like to shoot all over the kitchen!!
Add salt and pepper, taste & adjust accordingly.  If you used balsamic vinegar you might need an extra pinch of sugar at this stage too.
Serve as it is or blend till smooth- totally up to you and how suspicious your children are of green bits in their food!