Recipe: Pasta with Chargrilled Pepper Sauce

On 6 Nov 2012 - This Recipe took First Runner Up Place at the Delmonte Blogger Recipe Carnival

The other day, I wanted to cook a vegetarian pasta in a sauce, but I didn't want to cook the regular white sauce or tomato sauce, so I decided to try out a chargrilled pepper sauce for a change.

I'd initially thought that scorching and peeling the peppers would be tough, but it was actually quite easy and doesn't take too much time. If you have a grill or BBQ, then charring the peppers will be faster and easier, I just did it on the regular gas flame.

Ingredients:
200gms Del Monte pasta (I've now switched to using whole wheat pasta only)
4 large red peppers (laal shimla mirch)
1 handful nuts (traditionally pine nuts, but cashewnuts can work as a substitute)
1-2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp butter
2 tbsp flour
6-8 cloves garlic - minced fine
2 tsps of mixed Italian dry herbs (oregano, rosemary, thyme, chives - whatever combination you like)
500 ml milk
15-20 leaves of fresh basil
cheese to taste
parmegianno regianno to garnish - optional


Method:
Rub a little oil on the peppers and roast or grill them until they are charred all over.
You need to sweat the charred peppers for a few minutes, so you can peel off the skin. You can sweat it out in a sealed ziploc bag or a pan with a tight shutting lid.
Peel the skin off the peppers. Keep your hands as clean as possible, because you don't want to wash the peppers and lose the concentrated sweet roasted flavour.
Deseed the peppers and puree the flesh.

Dry roast the nuts and then powder them. (If you do this before pureeing the peppers, you can use the same bowl for pureeing and powdering and save washing a dish)

In a pan, heat the olive oil and butter together.
Fry the garlic until brown & then and the dried herbs and flour.
Take it off the heat when the flour begins to brown and slowly add the milk, so that there are no lumps.
Put it back on the heat.
Then add the red pepper puree and mix gently but thoroughly.
You can add some melting cheese if you like to the sauce, but you can keep it light by not adding any cheese either.
Cook the sauce until it is sufficiently thickened and then add the basil leaves after turning off the heat.

Cook the Del Monte pasta in boiling salted water until it reaches your preferred level of doneness.
Drain and rinse in cold water.

Add the hot sauce to the Del Monte pasta, garnish with parmegiano reggiano and serve with your choice of sides.

This rescipe has also been submitted for the Del Monte Blogger Recipe Carnival at http://www.facebook.com/worldfoody