Red pepper dip, pasta sauce, potato filling

This sauce can go with so many things… as a baked potato filling, a pasta sauce, a dip, in Buddha bowls. So healthy !

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Ok we discovered this at Christmas time… hence the tree shaped carrot dips !

 Essential Kitchen tools

A hand blender with small processor / chopping bowl

Roasted Red Pepper sauce for everything.

The short, to the point, recipe… using hands and spoons !

 Does it bother you when you have to scroll for miles and miles down a page to get to the actual recipe. Then you have to find your measuring spoons, cups etc . Well, not this time. This is the short version I can remember easily when I can’t be bothered to even look up my own post. So I know some of you will appreciate this too.

Blend a handful of cashews to as fine a powder you can… I used my Bamix Swissline hand blender, this is a perfect job for it’s mini-processor & powder disk !

Then blend into the powdered cashews …

a roasted pepper, with skin if you like a charred taste remove seeds & core

a few roasted garlic cloves

a dessert spoon of cream cheese aka a tablespoon !

a dollop of olive oil to loosen it up a bit

but nice

Use more liquid of your choice (oil, water, stock, milk ) to make the dip thinner. If you only want a sauce for pasta, just add, or substitute the cream cheese with milk of your choice.

Job done.

SERVE… with carrot batons, chips, or crisps, or a baked potato, or pasta.

Essential Ingredients

1 red bell pepper

1/2 cup cashews ground into a fine powder

1/2 cup cream cheese ( vegan or otherwise) .  If you are just making a sauce you could substitute this for a milk (plant milk / nut milk)

1/4 cup olive oil ( extra virgin)

3-4 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon tomato paste/ purée (optional but recommended)

Salt n pepper to taste.

The full method

1. Place the garlic cloves on a piece of tin foil with a dash of oil. Then loosely close to make a pouch and roast in oven for 30mins at 350F

2. Rub some olive oil on the skin of the pepper. Then Roast it on the oven rack for 30 mins at 450F, or roast it over a gas stove till skin is blackened.

3. Allow pepper to cool and then remove most of the charred skin and the stem and inside core and seeds.

4. Mix together the red pepper , garlic, cream cheese, cashew powder, oil, tomato paste, seasoning. Blend till smooth.

Cooking Tips

In your store cupboard: Olive oil, cashew nuts, tomato purée paste, pasta

In your fridge: Cream cheese and / or a milk you like.

In the vegetable drawer: large red pepper, garlic cloves, carrots or celery for dipping, or potatoes for baking or making dipping chips or crisps with.

Preparation tips / mise en place:

The base is just roasted red pepper and garlic. We have such dark red peppers here in Spain and I love to find ways to use them. So I don’t always wait till I want this scrumptuous dish to cook it from scratch. I like to make use of the oven when it’s being used for anything else, so I have some ready prepared yummy red peppers and garlic easy to grab from the fridge.

TIP:  The pepper also oozes a delicious juice so don’t lose it ! Use this in your dish too.

TIP:  I like to use cashews to make things creamy and still stay healthy ! Once I open a big bag of cashews I decant them into large jars. I also save any left over ground nuts in smaller jars for next time.

We use the unsalted cashew nut variety for cooking like this. Often in the supermarkets we only see the salted or roasted variety, but if you head into more ethnic stores or go online you can get a lot more unsalted (raw) cashews for your money. 

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serving suggestion:  serve as a dip with a nice glass of wine at aperitif time,  as an easy filling for a light jacket potato dinner, or as an alternative ‘red’ sauce for the kids with spaggetti.

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