Versatile Pasta Sauce

Earlier this year we finally made our long-planned trip to Australia and we used this opportunity to visit a very good friend of ours, Thea, who moved to Brisbane a few years ago. She kindly hosted us for dinner when we arrived and also spent a whole very rainy day with us visiting the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Afterwards we went back to her flat and made pasta with a wonderful vegetarian sauce. She let me jot down her recipe, it was so very nice and I've made this sauce twice since - when my sister Bip visited in August and asked for the recipe and then also when Lundulph's parents came over a couple of weeks ago, also to a great accolade, but sadly no photos at either opportunity.

Ingredients
3 portions

2 cloves of garlic
1 courgette
1 yellow or red pepper
½ leek
1 tbsp olive oil
½ dl water
1 ripe avocado
1 dl créme fraîche
salt and pepper

1. Peel the garlic and courgette, then press the garlic and dice the courgette. Wash and remove the stalk of the pepper and trim the leek if needed.
2. Heat up the olive oil and fry the chopped ingredients for a few minutes until they start going soft.
3. Add the water and let simmer for a few minutes.
4. In the meantime, peel the avocado and remove the stone, then dice.
5. Add to the saucepan along with the créme fraîche, season and serve with pasta

This is quite quick to make and you can vary the vegetables to taste. Thea added pieces of fresh salmon, which worked really well and when I last made it I used cold smoked salmon, which worked equally well.

What I really liked about Thea's written recipe is that it had a number of comments on the side, mainly stating that the person who made it didn't have some of the ingredients, like garlic, leek and avocado and still other notes that it worked anyway. The original recipe also had 40 g parmesan, but obviously this is not allowed when Lundulph is around, so I've skipped it.

The avocado bit is interesting, I've not come across a recipe where it is cooked and I have a feeling it might not work very well for cooking. Here it's added at the end and just adds to the overall creaminess of the sauce.