Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

Roasted pepper adds a lovely sweetness to a plain tomato sauce, and will help to combat any bitterness from the tomatoes. Eating this with bread to scoop up the sauce is essential. I realise you could also employ a spoon, but then you can’t eat your scooping implement, whereas had you chosen bread as your scooping instrument, you could. Well, I suppose you could eat a spoon depending on what the spoon was made of, how dedicated you were to the challenge, or how little you value your teeth. But that’s beside the point, moving on to the recipe

Yield; Four servings (approx 350kcal per serving) Cook time; 40 minutes

You’ll need;

1. Two teaspoons of oil
2. Three peppers (they don’t all have to be red, but red or orange work best, don’t use green)
3. Two cloves of garlic, minced
4. One small brown onion, chopped
5. One 400g/14oz tin of chopped tomatoes
6. Half a teaspoon of both dried oregano and dried basil
7. Salt and black pepper to taste
8. 300g/10.5oz (dry weight) penne

Method;

• Chop the peppers into four or five pieces, and remove the seeds. Lay them onto a lined baking tray and sprinkle over the oil. Bake at 220ºC/200ºC fan assisted/400ºF for about 20 minutes, or until the skin begins to blacken. Like this
• Leave them to cool and then peel off the skins. You don’t have to remove every tiny scrap of skin, just aim to remove and discard most of it
• Next, move on the making the sauce. Add the other teaspoon of oil into a small saucepan over a medium heat. Pop in the garlic and cook for one minute before adding the onion
• Allow the onion and garlic to cook for five minutes before adding the tomatoes, herbs and peppers. Cover with a lid and allow to gently simmer for 15 minutes, stirring every now and then. While that’s cooking, cook the pasta as per the instructions on the packet
• Once the sauce is cooked, use an immersion blender or food processor to blend it until smooth. Then simply drain the pasta, stir through the sauce, then serve

Tip;

If you have peppers that are a little wrinkly and slightly past their prime, this would be a good way to use them up. They would probably not be good for frying or stuffing, so roasting them would be a good way to avoid wasting them