Pasta & corn salad with red bell pepper sauce

Thank you guys giving me advice on my oven's knob. Tanna, Deborah and Cynthia, I listened to you, run a search on internet and got some crucial information. And yesterday I tested it on roasting a chicken, it turned out fine. Tomorrow I will try another setting for baking cake and see how... Since I'm still testing on the oven so I believe in the coming few posts, I won't do anything that involves baking.

Yesterday I was watching a local food channel and saw a chef do such a dish - sauteed garlic and red bell pepper, cooked with double/heavy cream and vegetable stock, then pureed, and tossed it with some fist-size pasta. A lovely idea but two things I don't like... as a meal I normally prefer my pasta savory rather than sweet (not even slightly); second, don't you think the size of his pasta is totally wrong? Anyway, I love his sauce; I keep his platform but change to play it with a salad dish: medium piston rings and sweet kernels are in, and adding roasted red pepper let my tastebuds sing! With fried sage leaves (or some dried herbs also sound good to me) to finish. If you have rucola, add it in, even better. Since sage leaves are used, this salad is perfect to enter this week of Weekend Herb Blogging. This event is found by our wonderful Kalyn, but this week WHB is guest hosted by Myriam from Once upon a tart. Please go to her site after the weekend and check for the round-up.

While I was taking some photos of my sage plant, I just couldn't stop myself being nosy and filmed my neighborhood... I see most people who live on the top floor tend to grow many plants and even trees... Tree in an apartment, in a city! Fantastic!

To make the red bell pepper sauce

Ingredients (yield: 2 servings)

• 1 big fresh red bell pepper, seeded, diced
• about 2 good slices of roasted red pepper in vinegar (in jar), patted dry, diced
• 2 cherry tomatoes (blanched them if the skin bothers you), seeded, diced
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
• some olive oil or butter (I prefer butter)
• some vegetable stock
• some double/heavy cream
• salt and pepper (I used ground white pepper)

How to:

• Pre-heat a skillet, add olive oil/butter, saute the garlic for 30 seconds over low heat, then add in red pepper, roasted pepper, tomato, and you may need to raise up the heat a bit, continue to saute for about 5 minutes. Add a few table spoons of stock and cream, simmer it for another 5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Puree the sauce

To serve:

First, fry the sage leaves (pre-heat the oil first, then lower the heat during frying, it only takes 20 seconds to get done). I don't see the fresh sage leaves go well with this salad, but once they got fried, the original woodsy and grassy flavor are gone, but left with a superb crisp texture!

Mixed cooked piston rings and corn kernels (my ratio is 2:1), toss in the pepper sauce, sprinkle more fried sage leaves on top. Serve in room temperature.

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