Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Pasta Recipe

If you haven’t caught on, I fucking love pasta, and since I got my pasta maker for Christmas, I love it even more.

Sorry for the profanity – I get amped up about handmade pasta.

It feels good, being able to not only control the flavor of the dough, but the thickness of the noodle. As I mix the dough, ingredient by ingredient, and pound it out on the countertop, I get to modify the flavor, the color, the salty nature of the mix. And as I run the bready-scented sheets through the roller, I have the ability to adjust the texture, to feel – between my thumb and forefinger – how toothsome the fresh-cut strands of pasta will become.

Since running a few batches of simple pasta, and trying a batch with lemon pepper, another with sun-dried tomato, and a couple batches with spinach in the mix, I decided I wanted to try something with a stronger flavor. I settled on roasted garlic and red pepper, mostly because the raw ingredients are what I had in stock.

Dough Ingredients:

3 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
4 eggs
½ tsp olive oil
pinch of salt and pepper
½ cup lukewarm water
1 head of garlic – roasted
2 red bell peppers – roasted and peeled

Preheat the oven to 400.

Roasting the veggies is supremely easy. Begin by slicing the peppers into large flat pieces, toss them lightly in a drizzle of olive oil, and lay them out – skin side up – on a cookie sheet. Cut the top off of the head of garlic, make a cup of foil, and drizzle it with olive oil as well.

Roast the veggies, checking them every five minutes or so after the first 30. The garlic will roast to a beautiful golden brown, and the cloves will be mushy and spreadable. For a more detailed recipe for roasted garlic, check out this step-by-step guide from Simply Recipes.

The skins of the peppers will blacken, and the flesh will get soft. To peel the peppers, place them in a ziploc bag or other airtight container, and allow them to sit for about 15 minutes. Once the moisture permeates the peppers, the skins should peel away easily with a paring knife.

Once the peppers are peeled, puree them with the roasted garlic cloves in the food processor with a dash of salt and olive oil.

Mix the ingredients (minus the extra water) together, knead the dough, and roll it out. Check out my older posts (here and here) for more specific pasta making directions.