Lentil and vegetable bolognese sauce/nachos

I made this the other day and i'm using 1/4 of it for nachos and I still have another 1/4 to use up!!

The sauce is vegetarian which you can have without the meatballs if you prefer. I blended the sauce at the end so the kids could not see what was in it. I was delighted to tell them when they finished dinner that their most hated vegetables were in there, mwahahahaha! (zucchini, mushroom and pumpkin)
Lentils are a great addition to bolognese sauces as they break down and add extra nutrients plus extra fibre.

You can serve this with rice or mash or use it as a savory mince dish. Use as a baked potato topping with melted cheese, or jaffles, pies or shepherd's pie.
When you use the rest you can fry some more onion and garlic add some cumin and paprika and as well as some kidney beans and chopped tomatoes and simmer until really thick. Use for burritos, tacos or nachos.

Lentil and vegetable bolognese sauce
Ingredients
1 brown onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 zucchinis
300g pumpkin
150g broccoli
150g mushrooms
1200 ml tomato passata
½ cup of red lentils
3 tsp each of dried oregano and basil
Salt and pepper

Meatballs is just 500g mince, kneaded until sticky with some herbmare or salt and pepper. Roll into balls and fry in a pan for 6-7 minutes. You can either add the sauce to the meatballs in the pan and simmer a few minutes
- or you can stir the sauce through the pasta and serve the balls on top. If you do it this way you can set any leftover balls aside and make a meatball salad or stuffed into some pita bread and salad.

Method
I used the grater attachment on my food processor but you can finely chop by hand. It gets blended up at the end anyway (although you don’t have to).
Fry off onion and garlic for 30 seconds and then add everything else. Simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Use a stick mixer to blend until the sauce is to your liking. Serve with pasta like spaghetti, penne, rigatoni or whatever you like. Instead of parmesan cheese I used some feta.

Another idea to use this up is nachos

For the spaghetti above I used half the recipe then I used 1/4 to make nachos. (still have 1/4 of the mix left!)

In a large pot add 1 chopped brown onion, 3 cloves of crushed garlic, fry off in some olive oil for 30 seconds, then add 3 tsp paprika and 2 tsp ground cumin, stir again until fragrant. 

Then add on 1 x 400g can of rinsed and drained kidney beans, your leftover mix and 3 chopped tomatoes. Simmer for 25 minutes stirring occasionally. it should be nice and thick.

Now you have yourself some vegetarian nacho mix. You can also use for burritos or tacos or on a bed of brown rice.

Serve up with corn chips, melted cheese, guacamole and sour cream, so good!!