by Katerina Nikolas

Created on: February 21, 2010

The best pasta dish I ever tasted was in an Italian restaurant and consisted of salmon, strawberries and thick cream, poured over pasta. However it’s not the easiest thing to recreate in Greece as the strawberries aren’t in season yet. The sea may yield plenty of fish but it’s not the fishing season either. Furthermore, salmon don’t tend to hang out in the sea. It was excellent though and I’ve never seen it anywhere else but that one restaurant.

In Greece we eat a lot of pasta as it is a healthy Mediterranean food, as long as there’s lots of olive oil involved. Many traditional dishes are actually based on pasta baked in the oven, such as the world famous pasticcio. It’s much quicker though to just cook a big pan of pasta and throw some sauce on top. If you follow this recipe just adjust quantities to suit how many people will be delving into the pot.

Roasted red pepper sauce.

6 red peppers, blackened and peeled and sliced.

2 onions.

6 tomatoes, blanched and skinned.

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

1 red chilli, optional

Firstly you need to blacken the peppers to make them sweet. This completely changes the flavour of them. You can do this by grilling them until black, popping them in the oven, or using a blow torch. Once blackened, pop them into a plastic bag until cool, and then peel. Discard the burnt skins and depending on how hot you like the sauce keep the seeds or discard.

Heat some olive oil in a pan, and toss in the pressed or diced garlic, onions, peppers, chilli and tomatoes. Cook until soft and then cover with water, bring to the boil and then simmer for ten minutes. Then you can either liquidise the sauce or use it from the pan. Add to a big pan of pasta of your choosing and serve.

Serve with a green salad of torn lettuce and spring onions drizzled with olive oil and topped with black olives. Healthy, colourful and filling, green salad and roasted red pepper sauce with pasta.

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