ROASTED RED PEPPER TUTORIAL

I know I owe everyone a big apology. I said I was coming back. I came back...then I bailed for a couple weeks. What can I say, motherhood is unpredictable and a little overwhelming at times. It's a miracle I'm working on this post right now, since I spent all last night up with a sick little girl. Now I'm wide awake with pure adrenaline. But just to make up for my absence, I promise to post twice next week. Today I'm sharing an tutorial for Roasted Red Peppers. On Monday I'll post my yummy recipe for Roasted Red Pepper Cream sauce. Then next Wednesday I have a yummy Plumb and Mango Cobbler that will melt in your mouth. Forgive me yet???

Well let's get started with the tutorial. If you've never roasted your own red peppers, you really should give it a try; especially if you've ever bought them in a jar and paid a small fortune doing so. You'll kick yourself when you realize just how easy it is to do it yourself.

First you start with some fresh bright red peppers, from your garden, farmers market, or local grocery store. Turn your barbecue on medium-high and throw those baby's right on the grill.


Slowly rotate the peppers as they begin to char. You want them to get nice and blackened all over. The timing will depend on how hot your grill gets, but I usually rotate mine every 2-3 minutes.

Once they are nice and black all over, take them off the grill and put them immediately into a ziplock bag. You are going to allow them to "sweat" in the bag for about 15-20 minutes.

After 15-20 minutes you'll have a nice shriveled pepper that looks a little something like this.

Start peeling off the blackened skin. It will just slide right off. Be sure to never rinse or wash the pepper in water. The water will wash away all that good smoky flavor.

Once you've cleaned off all the skin (don't worry if there are still small bits of skin left), cut open the pepper to clean out all the seeds, ribs and stems. You'll be left with beautiful, delicious, pieces of roasted red pepper.

On Monday I'm going to show you how to take this goodness and make it into a decadent cream sauces for pasta, but honestly roasted red peppers have endless uses.

• You can leave them whole for sandwiches, hamburgers etc...
• You can dice them up and add them to pasta salad, potato salad, tuna salad etc...
• You can Julienne them for pasta dishes, taco's or fajitas.
• You can add them to soups, stews or casseroles.
• You can freeze them for later use. This is also a great way to preserve peppers from your garden.

Really...the possibilities are endless!

ROASTED GARLIC

I don't do very many tutorials, I wish I had the time and the energy to do more, but this one I just had to do. Last week I made my Roasted Garlic Rosemary Cheese Potatoes for book club. I've already had three of my friends ask me for the recipe as soon as possible, because they wanted to make them for Christmas. So I thought I better get this posted, sooner than later.

But the first step in the potatoes, is roasting the garlic. It's so easy to roast garlic, and even if you think you don't like garlic you should give the roasted variety a try. When garlic is roasted it takes on a sweet mild yummy flavor that is delicious.

You can use this roasted garlic to make my potatoes or you can eat it plain, spread it on crackers, toss it into pasta...really the uses are endless.

First things first... this is a head of garlic. I've had a few of my non-cooking friends ask me the difference between a head and a clove. When a recipe asks for a clove or two cloves of garlic, it means the individual little bulbs on a whole head. If a recipe calls for an entire head (very rare), it means this entire thing.

To start the roasting process, you take an entire head (or multiple heads) clean as much of the outer paper off as possible, then slice off the top so that each individual clove has some open exposure.

Next you place your head of garlic onto a piece of tin foil and drizzle with olive oil. (You can also sprinkle with salt & pepper if you like.)

Then pull up the tin foil around the garlic. Roast the garlic in the oven at 400 degrees for 35-45 minutes.

When it's done, take it out of the foil and allow to cool. The garlic will be golden brown and it will slide right out of it's shell with a little help from a fork, or you can turn the head upside down and squeeze the garlic right out and into your dish or a bowl.

Now that you have yummy roasted garlic...stay tuned for my ROASTED GARLIC ROSEMARY CHEESE POTATOES.