Pasta in Red Bell Pepper Sauce

There are quite a few recipes with pasta in this blog. The kids [and me] love pasta so much and I try to cook it with different sauces. This one was good to have on a cold night a few months ago.

I am doing Pasta dishes as the theme for Blogging Marathon #58,Week 2, Day 1. So this is my first recipe in this theme...

Also sending this to Srividhya who is hosting Srivalli's Kids Delight event, with the theme Pasta for kids

I used:

Pasta- 1 cup
Onion-1, finely chopped
Garlic- 1 pod, minced
Salt to taste
Oil- 1 teaspoon

For the sauce

Red bell pepper- 1 large
Almonds-10 numbers
Tomato-1
Garlic-2 cloves
Red chili powder- 1 teaspoon
Dried oregano - 1/2 teaspoon
Oil to brush the bell pepper

Soak the almonds in hot water for half an hour or so. Once it is soaked up, you can peel the skin off easily. Discard the skin and keep aside the blanched almonds.Or you could check out this post on how to blanch almonds in the microwave.

Cook pasta as you would normally do.Drain and keep aside.

Remove the top part of the bell pepper along with the seeds. Brush oil all over and roast on an open flame till the skin starts charring and gets big black patches.Transfer to a plate and scrape of the black portions and chop.

Take the chopped roasted bell pepper, almonds, garlic and chopped tomato in a blender jar and grind to a smooth paste, adding a little water if the mixture is too thick.

Heat oil in a pan and add the paste, red chili powder and oregano.Cook on medium flame for 8-10 minutes till the sauce thickens.If it is too thick,there are chances that the sauce will burn.So you can add a little water if needed.

Remove the sauce from heat and keep aside. This sauce can be refrigerated / frozen till needed if you have doubles or tripled the recipe.

Heat oil in a pan and saute onion and garlic till onions are soft. Add the red bell pepper sauce and cook for a minute. If it is too thick, add a little milk / water/ Put in the cooked pasta and mix well .Cook on low heat for a few minutes and remove from pan.