One of the smartest things you can do when cooking for one is make large quantities of pasta sauce to freeze and then defrost and adapt into quick weeknight meals. Such sauces can go well beyond a simple marinara. When I asked the queen of Italian cooking in America, Lidia Bastianich, for her favorite approaches to such a thing, she quickly came to me with this hearty vegetable stew that can do triple, quadruple, even quintuple duty: Use a cup of it to dress pasta, of course, but also spoon it onto charred bread for bruschetta, use it as a base on which to nestle grilled fish or chicken, or try one of the companion recipes: Baked Egg in Fall Vegetables (page 33) or Fall Vegetable Soup with White Beans (page 58). I couldn’t resist putting my stamp on this recipe: I did what I do with many tomato sauces and splashed in some fish sauce to deepen the flavor.

　　

Ingredients

makes 6 to 7 cups

　　1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

　　3 plump cloves garlic, thinly sliced

　　1 onion, thinly sliced

　　1 small (1 1/2-pound) butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 3 cups)

　　1 (1-pound) cauliflower, cored and cut into 1-inch florets (about 3 cups)

　　1/4 cup small capers, drained

　　Coarse sea salt or kosher salt

　　1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more to taste

　　1 (28-ounce) can Italian plum tomatoes and their juices, preferably San Marzano, crushed by hand

　　1 cup water

　　2 teaspoons Asian fish sauce, or more to taste

　　

Step 1

Pour the olive oil into a large saucepan set over medium-high heat. When the oil starts to shimmer, scatter in the sliced garlic and let it start sizzling. Stir in the onion slices and cook until wilted, about 2 minutes. Add the squash and cauliflower pieces, capers, 1 teaspoon salt, and the red pepper flakes and use tongs to toss it all together.

　　

Step 2

Pour in the crushed tomatoes and their juices. Slosh the water into the can and add; stir well and cover. When the tomato juices are boiling, decrease the heat to medium-low or low so that the mixture is gently bubbling. Cook, covered, until the vegetables are tender, 30 to 40 minutes. Uncover, increase the heat to medium-high, and continue cooking until the stew is reduced and thickened to a good pasta-sauce consistency, about 5 minutes. Add the fish sauce, taste, and add more fish sauce and salt if desired.

　　

Step 3

Eat a cup or two as a vegetarian main course and refrigerate the leftovers in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks, or freeze it in cup-size portions for several months.

　　Reprinted with permission from Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One by Joe Yonan. Text copyright © 2011 by Joe Yonan; photographs copyright © 2011 by Ed Anderson. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.Joe Yonan is the food and travel editor at the Washington Post, where he writes the award-winning "Cooking for One" column. Joe's work also earned the Post the 2009 and 2010 James Beard Foundation's award for best food section. He is the former travel editor at the Boston Globe. Visit www.joeyonan.com.