I was craving roasted red pepper pasta.  However, my previous Roasted Melrose Pepper Pasta – Traveling Garden Lady had too many steps.  The steps of the roasted red pepper recipe can be time consuming.  When cooking a week night meal that extra time isn’t always there. One of the steps that makes it time consuming is removing the skin from the roasted red pepper.  I found that this extra step can be eliminated if you don’t burn the red peppers but lightly char them. The red peppers taste just as savory and you save the steaming and peeling the skin step.  Other steps that can be removed are the sauteing of the onion. I find that once the mixture is blended the flavor of the onion is no different than if you sauté the onion first. By using certain short cuts, this recipe can be made in less than 30 minutes, and the flavor is the same. Why work harder in the kitchen if you don’t have to? Fresh and great tasting food doesn’t have to mean slaving over the stove and oven for hours.

What pasta to use:

I would recommend using a long or flat pasta such as fettuccine or bucatini.  Fettuccine works best.  Fettuccine is designed to hold richer and heavier cream sauces.  Bucatini is another great pasta choice for this recipe.  Bucatini is a long, thin, hollow spaghetti-like pasta. It is made from durum wheat semolina and is known for its rough texture, which helps sauces cling to it.  I often use bucatini in place of spaghetti, because I enjoy how hearty this pasta is.  Both pastas pair well with the butter and half and half of this sauce.  My last choices for pastas would be linguine or spaghetti if that is all that you have on hand.