Raw Marinara Sauce

It's almost (not quite yet) tomato season, and I can't wait. In the meantime, using sun dried tomatoes is a good way to get your tomato dose in. You can use both fresh tomatoes and sun drieds to make a robust, raw marinara sauce.

First off you need to soak your sun dried tomatoes (~1 cup) to rehydrate them; to keep it raw, soak for about 4 hours in lukewarm water. After soaking, drain the tomatoes, reserving the soaking water to use to thin out the sauce as you process. Put the soaked tomatoes in a high speed blender.
In the meantime, rough chop 5-8 Roma tomatoes, depending on size, a garlic clove, 1-2 tsp fresh oregano and thyme, and a handful of fresh basil. Put all of those ingredients in the blender with the sun drieds.

Add the following to the blender: juice of 1 lemon, 2 TBS best quality cold pressed olive oil, 3 dates (pitted) and sea salt to taste.
Process the ingredients, adding the soak water to thin as necessary. Season with S+P to taste after processing. The consistency of the sauce will vary based on your preference.


So, what do you eat the sauce with? Well, to keep it raw, you can make "pasta" out of veggies. I used zucchini, summer squash and carrots.
I used a tool called the Spirooli Spiral Slicer. Its basically a tool with 3 different blades that can be used to cut vegetables into thin cut slices, or 2 different size spiral slices.
Here's a pic with the zucchini in place:
Here are a couple of pics of the veggies as they come off the blade:

And the finished product:

Before I sauce the noodles, I add a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon juice to soften them up a bit.
Though not totally raw, but enjoyed by raw food enthusiasts, for a cheesy taste like Parm cheese, you can top it the sauce and noodles with some nutritional yeast.

I had a bunch of sauce left over, so I took some and added ground flax to it and then blended it together in the high speed blender. I spread it on the dehydrator sheet and dehydrated it into a tomato wrap. Today I enjoyed it filled with sprouts, avocado, grape tomatoes, hemp seeds and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast:
Enjoy! Eat something raw today!