Recipe: Sweet and Spicy Red Pepper Linguine

Reposted from http://veggiefare.blogspot.com/2011/04/sweet-spicy-red-pepper-linguine.html

Sweet weet & Spicy Red Pepper Linguine

I love the use of fresh basil and Greek yogurt with a little kick from the hot pepper sauce! The trick to this recipe is keeping it warm… toss pasta and sauce at the last minute before serving. I found this in a Costco Connection magazine. If this is too spicy for your kids, you can easily cook extra plain pasta to keep everyone happy! If your kids don’t like whole wheat pasta, try mixing 1/2 white with 1/2 wheat.

Ingredients:
8 oz Whole Wheat Linguine
1-1/2 cups Marinara Sauce
4oz jar of Roasted Red Peppers
1/4 cup 2% Greek Yogurt
1 cup fresh Basil, chopped
1 tsp Hot Pepper Sauce
Salt & Pepper
6Tbsp Parmesan

Directions: Cook Pasta. In the meantime, cut red peppers into strips and simmer with marinara sauce over medium heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Place yogurt in bowl and whisk in a little bit of the marinara mixture to “temper” the yogurt (prevents curdling). Then whisk the yogurt into the sauce. Cover to KEEP WARM. Drain linguine and toss in a large bowl with the sauce, basil and hot pepper sauce. Sprinkle with cheese and serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

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Chile Pepper Profile #3 – Bell Pepper

Bell Pepper

Bell pepper or sweet pepper is a cultivar group of the species Capsicum annuum (chili pepper). Cultivars of the plant produce fruits in different colors, including red, yellow and orange. The fruit is also frequently consumed in its unripe form, when the fruit is still green.

Bell peppers are sometimes grouped with less pungent pepper varieties as “sweet peppers”. Peppers are native to Mexico, Central America and northern South America. The colors can be green, red, yellow, orange and more rarely, white, rainbow (between stages of ripening) and purple, depending on when they are harvested and the specific cultivar.

Green peppers are less sweet and slightly more bitter than red, yellow or orange peppers.

Chile Pepper Profile #2 – Anaheim

Anaheim 

An Anaheim pepper is a mild variety of chili pepper. The name “Anaheim” derives from a farmer named Emilio Ortega who brought the seeds to the Anaheim, California area in the early 1900s.

They are also called California chili or Magdalena, and dried as chile seco del norte. The chile “heat” of Anaheims typically ranges from 500 to 2,500 on the Scoville scale however, many varieties grown in New Mexico can reach 4,500 to 5,000 Scoville units.

New Mexican cultivars were developed in the state by Dr. Fabian Garcia about 100 years ago. These cultivars are “hotter” than others in order to suit the tastes of New Mexicans in their traditional foods.

Chile Pepper Profile #1 – Ancho

Ancho

The Ancho, also called poblano is a relatively mild chile pepper originating in the State of Puebla, Mexico. Dried it is called an ancho chile.

While poblanos tend to have a mild flavor, occasionally and unpredictably a poblano can have significant heat. Different peppers from the same plant have been reported to vary substantially in heat intensity.

One of the most popular peppers grown in Mexico, the plant (of the species Capsicum annuum) is multi-stemmed and can reach 25 inches in height.