Farmer's Market Creation: Three Pepper Spaghetti

Another Farmer's Market Creation! Technically, this is a co-op creation, but since my co-op sells local produce, which is what I would have been buying at a farmer's market, I think it counts.

I originally created this dish in Mass after I went to the Pepper Festival. Exactly as it sounds, they had all sorts of different peppers. I knew next to nothing about peppers at the time, so I just picked blindly. I chose well because the dish turned out great.

Hungarian, Lilac, and Suntanned peppers

Now that I'm back in the northeast, I have access to grass-fed beef. Not to go back the food agenda I claim not to have, but being a vegetarian is the best choice when considering the way your eating habits affect the environment. So, as I've said, I don't cook meat home very often. But, if you are going to eat meat, grass-fed local beef is the kind to get, which is what they have at my co-op. I'm not a vegetarian and I don't believe that there's anything unethical about eating animals. I do think that if we are going to raise cows, we ought to raise them in a way that is (a) healthy for them and (b) healthy for the environment, and if we can't do that, then we ought not to raise them. But grass-fed beef does that. I don't advocate eating it all the time, but there are meat dishes that I love very much. One of the dishes is a good hearty meat sauce for spaghetti.

Notes: Rules for farmer's market creations applied here: make a dish entirely out of local ingredients that look good when you go to the store. I should have added something with a little more heat in it because I like my three pepper spaghetti a little on the hot side. It turns out the Hungarian wax pepper I used wasn't as hot as I thought it would be. The dish still came out great.

If you wanted to make this a vegetarian dish, I think some slightly mashed red kidney beans would be really nice.

Next time I will use crushed tomatoes from a can. Since I don't have a blender, I couldn't really make the tomatoes as saucy as I wanted. But, since the tomatoes were local, I figured I would make the sauce from scratch.

Ingredients:
1 box whole wheat pasta
1 lb grass-fed ground beef
4 small carrots
1 tablespoon chopped tarragon
3 peppers (2 bell, 1 hot)
2 tablespoons herb de provence, divided
7 plum tomatoes
Salt
4 or 5 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon dried basil
Olive oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400. Half the tomatoes and scoop out the seeds. Drizzle them with olive oil, salt, and half the herb de provence. Roast them for 25-30 minutes.

While the tomatoes are roasting, prep all your veggies. I like my peppers in thinly sliced strips, so I cut the other veggies to match them.

Heat a large skillet to medium-high and brown your ground beef. When it's just browned, add all your other veggies and saute until they're just getting tender. Add salt and dried basil.

When the tomatoes are finished, either blend them and add them to the skillet or just chop them and add them in. Add tarragon and liquid smoke. Let the sauce simmer for at least an hour.

Fill a stock pot with water, bring it to a boil, add two small handfuls of salt, and cook the pasta according to the box. I always find that I need to cook my wheat pasta for the maximum time.

When the noodles are done, add them to the skillet where your sauce is and let them absorb some of the sauce. Toss until everything is mixed together.

Dish it up and enjoy the fruits of your (and your farmer's!) labor.