Penne Pasta with Roasted Red Peppers

We found a delicious pasta dish on Annie's Eats blog! We loved it, had plenty of leftovers and had no problem taking down the entire leftover bowl in the next couple of days! I also started February's photo challenge, so here is the beginning of February's photos and this yummy pasta dish!

The first two days of February's photo challenge were:

Words
Childhood

"Treasures from the Sea" were my words I captured on the 1st of February! This is from our package of Mahi Mahi that we had for dinner! Yes...Treasure from the sea is how I would describe this fish as well!

My childhood photo is a picture of the street sign from the street I grew up on! 

Now on to the pasta...

Ingredients

3 garlic cloves (if you don't like a lot of garlic flavor I would cut this down)

1/3 c Parmesan cheese

1 c roasted red bell pepper

Basil

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/3 c olive oil

1 lb. penne pasta

1/4 c heavy cream (this is optional...we used it)

To start off, you're going to mix the garlic, cheese, roasted red pepper, salt and pepper. Add the olive oil and mix together until well blended! 

To roast the red bell pepper, I placed the pepper in the broiler for about 5 minutes then took it out turned the pepper and roasted for another 3-4 minutes. You'll just want to keep an eye on the pepper, because once it starts to "roast" it goes quickly! You're going to look for a little "charred" effect, and make sure you turn the pepper so it roasts all the sides! 

Once it's roasted, wait for it to cool and then peel the skin off and finely chop the pepper! The skin is easy to remove and make sure you get the core and seeds out as well!

Now you're going to cook the pasta according to the the package, drain and rinse with cold water. To your olive oil mixture you can add the heavy cream if you so wish, and toss the sauce in with the pasta and serve! 

This dish is an easy alternative to a quick spaghetti dish you might throw together during the week! You can even make it ahead of time and heat when you're ready, it tastes just as good re-heated as right out of the pan! Stay tuned for some great new recipes this week!! Until then...

~Happy Eating~