Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce: Biker’s Special

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce: Biker’s Special

We’ve been taking long bike rides lately, getting ready for our big trip to Friuli and this pasta sauce is perfect when you come home hungry, dirty, hungry sweaty, hungry, and tired.

Some tomatoes
A sweet red pepper
A hot chili pepper
Half an onion
3 cloves of garlic
Black Olives
Fresh Basil
Olive oil, salt, pepper, maybe some oregano

Before you hit the shower, roughly chop all the ingredients listed above, except the basil. Dump into a oven casserole and roast everything at 325F.  Add whatever you have sitting around in the kitchen: zucchini, eggplant, capers, whatever is going to make you smile. Put the casserole into a cold oven this way all the ingredients can slowly come up to temperature and release their juices. If things seem a little dry, add a bit more olive oil. I also added about 2T of heavy cream just to make things more…..creamy.  

Go take a shower, clean up, and feel human again. Come downstairs to wonderful aroma of your pasta sauce.  Boil water, cook pasta. Right before serving tear up a bunch of basil leaves and add to the sauce.  (I’m assuming it will take you about 30 minutes to shower, clean up and look presentable.)

I served this with some Umbrian style bruschetta, or garlic bread. Toast the bread, then rub a clove of raw garlic across the toast bread, a sprinkle of salt, a few drops of olive oil, and you have fantastic garlic bread.

Serve with a light bodied red wine like a young pinot noir or a gamay.