This is a pasta sauce I came up with when I recently spent a night working the pasta station at Grange restaurant in Sacramento for Chef Michael Tuohy. It is a Spanish-inspired sauce of roasted red peppers, plenty of garlic and a hit of sage – it’s similar to the flavors in my favorite wild game stew, a dish from the Spanish region of Aragon called chilindron. I originally made the sauce to go with pici pasta, a hand-rolled, fat spaghetti-like shape that is a little like a marriage between bucatini and Japanese udon noodles. If you can find bucatini, which are fat spaghetti noodles with a hole in the center of them, use that. If not, use regular spaghetti. Can you use another shape? Sure, just don’t go too fine: Penne is great, angel hair is not. Some people cannot drink alcohol, and while the red wine is integral to the flavor of the sauce, it is possible to substitute chicken stock. The dish will not be the same, but it will still taste good. I use canned roasted red peppers for this recipe, but there is no reason you cannot roast your own. If you do this, you might need to add a splash of vinegar to the sauce; canned peppers are marinated in a vinegar solution, so even after soaking they remain acidic. If you have leftovers, the sauce will keep in the fridge for about a week. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring often, until the paste begins to turn a brick red. Let this simmer for 10-20 minutes – it’s pretty forgiving at this point. You just want the peppers to be cooked through and soft. Purée the sauce, starting with the machine on low for 1-2 minutes to break up the big pieces. Turn off the blender and scrape the sides down. Turn it on again, and starting at the low setting, bring it up to its highest setting. Purée for at least a minute, until smooth. Marinated roasted red bell peppers
