The Recipe Room

Pasta: who doesn’t love it? There are probably just as many different types of pasta as there are sauces to accompany it, and this week I decided to have a go at inventing my own. The result is this Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Pasta Sauce, which, if I do say so myself,  is simply sublime!

This sauce is a breeze to make, and the roasting adds a rich depth of flavour. I suggest doubling the recipe and freezing or preserving the rest for later.

 

What you’re going to need:

• 12 medium tomatoes, washed
• 1 whole head of garlic, wrapped in aluminium foil
• 1 Spanish onion, wrapped in aluminium foil
• 1 leek, washed, tips removed
• 1 red bell pepper, washed
• 50 ml olive oil
• 60 g chopped fresh basil
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp granulated white sugar
• 1 tsp ground black pepper

What you have to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Place the tomatoes, red pepper, leek, onion and garlic on a baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.
3. Remove the veggies from the oven and let them cool for 20 minutes.
4. Remove the skin from the tomatoes (it should peel off easily after baking) and remove the seeds and the hard bit at the top.
5. Remove the skin and seeds from the red peppers. Don’t worry if you can’t get all the skin off, just get as much as possible.
6. Remove the aluminium foil from the onion, and peel off the outer layers of brown skin.
7. Place the tomatoes, red peppers, leek and onion in a large saucepan.
8. Remove the garlic from the aluminium foil.  Take each clove between your thumb and fingers and squeeze one end over the saucepan.  The melted garlic should slide out easily.  Repeat for the rest of the garlic cloves.
9. Add the olive oil, sugar, salt and ground black pepper.
10. Using a handheld blender, purée the sauce until it is very well blended (about 1 minute on high power).  Alternatively, you can use a food processor or regular blender to make the purée.
11. Mix in the freshly chopped basil by hand.
12. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
13. Reheat if necessary and serve on top of your favourite pasta.
14. Any leftover sauce can be safely stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a few days.

Preparation Time:  5 minutes

Cooking Time: 1 hour

Serves: 6

Difficulty: Medium

Tags: bell pepper, garlic, leek, olive oil, pasta sauce, roasted tomato and red pepper pasta sauce, Spanish onion, sugar, tomato, vegetarian

This entry was posted on Monday, 4 June, 2012 at 12:01 pm by Serena Langley and is filed under Less than 90 mins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.