The Fabulous Farmer's Market

I went to the farmer's market bright and early this morning, and found something I'd never seen before - A Lilac Pepper:

I was told it was a sweet pepper, but I was mostly just amazed at how cool it looked. Isn't that an AWESOME color? I have no idea what to do with it, and so far I've just set it in different spots in the kitchen and looked at it. Have any of you actually been so privileged as to eat a lilac pepper? If so, please tell me what I can expect...

Also at the farmer's market, I found some lovely tomatoes, red bell peppers, and garlic (and thirty bucks worth of other stuff, but that's for another day.) Back to the tomatoes, red bell peppers, and garlic:


Ever since I got my food mill, I have wanted to try my hand at my own tomato/marinara sauce. And today was the day!! Since I got such lovely peppers as well as lovely tomatoes, I decided to make a roasted red pepper marinara.

I roasted the peppers per instructions from Giada: put them under the broiler for twenty minutes, rotating so that each side burns and blisters. (And don't do this while any one is sleeping - your smoke alarm will go off for the entire twenty minutes.) Then put the hot peppers into a ziplock bag and let them come to room temp.

Meanwhile, I sauteed six cloves of garlic in one tablespoon of olive oil for one minute over a medium/low heat. I added two pounds of quartered tomatoes and let them cook and break down for about 15 minutes. Then I ran the results through the finest setting on the food mill. It kept all the seeds and peels! I love my food mill!!

I set that aside and peeled and de-seeded my now cooled peppers (the zip-lock bag thing worked like a charm - they were really easy to peel.) I chopped them, and added them into a pot with my pureed tomatoes. I added a half a teaspoon of salt, one tablespoon each of dried basil and oregano, and few grinds of black pepper. I let that simmer for about thirty minutes, adding a tablespoon of tomato paste about halfway through as it wasn't getting thick enough for me. Then I lightly pureed the whole thing with my stick blender (some chunks of pepper were still in there.)

And let me just say.....it is AWESOME. I can't wait to eat it on something. I'm putting it on a pizza tonight, and will try to have it over pasta some time soon.


What a way to celebrate the Fouth of July -making a classic Italian Sauce!!