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~

  

Penne tossed with Roasted Asparagus and Balsamic Butter

So, I have discovered that there is a website for pretty much everything under the sun! Including a entire website dedicated to asparagus. It's really very funny that inanimate objects can have their own site, which makes me picture a spear of asparagus sitting behind a computer telling the world one line at a time how delicious and nutritious it is! Anything and everything you would really want to know about asparagus can be found at MAAB (Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board). I won't go on and on about it, but if you don't have time or happen to miss farmers markets in the Tulsa Area, there is a new store which opened in Jenks (official grand opening this Saturday, August 11) called Green Acres Market. You should really go and drool over their fresh produce and delicious deli! With all this being said, my recipe to share is Penne pasta with roasted asparagus and balsamic butter. Now, a note before cooking up this very refreshing, unique tasting dish is that it calls for a whole stick of butter. I however (along with a lot of the people who commented) did not use the entire stick. You can also substitute the asparagus for broccoli or squash (already tried it...it's also delicious)! So let's get cooking...

Get your oven heating to 400 degrees and get ready for a very easy meal! Snap one pound of asparagus into one inch pieces. Place them on a baking sheet and toss with one tablespoon of olive oil, 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 of a teaspoon of pepper.  Place them in the oven and cook for ten minutes. In a small sauce pan simmer a half of a cup of balsamic vinegar (get ready for the whole place to smell like the vinegar). You will simmer the vinegar until 3 tablespoons remain. Stir in one half teaspoon of brown sugar (I actually used a little more), and a dash of pepper. Remove the pan from the heat. In another pot, cook the Penne as the package instructs, drain and toss with about one stick of butter, the vinegar, the asparagus and 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese. Presto!! It's a very delicious meal with very little work, and trust me it is hard to stop yourself from eating bowl after bowl until you're licking the very last of the sauce off your plate!

I did not get any pictures this time :( My camera was malfunctioning! However the site you can find this recipe on is Food and Wine and here is the run down....

Penne with Roasted Asparagus
1 pound asparagus 
1 tablespoon olive oil 
2 teaspoons salt 
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper 
1/2 cup plus 
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar 
1 pound penne 
1/4 pound butter, cut into pieces 
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving 

~Happy Cooking~

Photo from selfsufficiencyclub.com