A twist on homemade pasta.
After successfully making spinach pasta dough for the first time last week, I decided to try using the same approach to make Roasted Red Pepper pasta. I am happy to say it was a total success and is now my current pasta obsession. I loved the aroma and the subtle smoky sweetness of this pasta.
While recently making the spinach dough (which was my first time making a vegetable infused pasta dough) I learned that it required more flour than I had expected to balance out the wet vegetable. So with this batch I knew to start with a hearty amount of flour and that proved correct. Learning and applying that knowledge to each batch of pasta is the real addiction. It never ends. Each batch teaches me something new.
I started by draining 1 jar of piquillo peppers on paper towel and then pureed them in the food processor. I then used a nut milk bag to drain & squeeze out any excess liquid.
Step 1: Blend drained peppers 
Step 2: Drain excess liquid until you have a pulp 
Step 3: combine ingredients 
Step 4: Make Dough using pulse 
Step 5: Wrap in plastic and set set aside
Note: I could have squeezed even more liquid out, but I suspected it would result in loosing too much pulp because of how thin and fragile the pulp is. So I just had to use some judgement on how hard to squeeze out the excess moisture and then stopped when I felt I got the bulk of the liquid out.
The recipe I ended up using for this pasta project was:
- 2 cups all purpose flour (225g)
- .5 cup semolina (75g)
- 1/2 cup pureed peppers, drained of all excess liquid
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- After mixing, added a dash more flour.
After the dough sat for about an hour, I rolled half this pasta into sheets at room temperature and then refrigerated the other half. Several hours later I rolled the cold dough and determined it was not only better to work with after having some time to set up in fridge, but even the aroma & flavor was enhanced.
It’s a wetter dough then a basic flour dough, so you MUST flouring the dough in between rolling numbers to prevent sticking and ripping.
I started making the raviolis in a jumbo ravioli tray, but the dough was too elastic and they sank too deep. That method went right out the window. The best ravioli option for this dough turned out to be using two sized cookie cutters and forming the ravioli’s individually.
This pasta dough made delicious raviolis that I filled with spinach and homemade ricotta cheese and it was really great! I very much liked the addition of color, flavor and use of two vegetables in the dish. (3 in you include tomato sauce!) This makes it both healthier and tastier!
