What? McGill Pasta (not to be confused with McGill Pizza)
How much? $7-10 for cheese and cream and then all your basic ingredients. If you go vegan, it’s basically free
Why? It’s a perfect dish for a sports team potluck, or any potluck really
This week we made a roasted red pepper rosé sauce for a special mac ‘n cheese. Sneaky trick! We called this recipe McGill Pasta because it’s red and white, just like McGill’s colours (and Canada’s!). We, in fact, brought this dish to a potluck for our friend’s D-league hockey team. Needless to say, it went quick.
Roasted Red Pepper Rosé Sauce
• 2 onions
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 cup milk or cream
• 1 ½ cup water
• ½ cup flour
• ½ tbsp oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 red pepper
• ½-1 cup tomato sauce
(check out our blog on how to make your own)
• at least 2 cups of cheese
(cheddar, mozzarella, parmesan, you name it)
Cook as much pasta as you want to eat – we used fusili. This sauce will coat about 900 grams of pasta.
For the sauce, whisk together the flour and water in a bowl.
Finely chop the onions and crush garlic. Sauté on stove until translucent. Add the milk/cream, salt, pepper, and spices to the onions. Stir together on low. Simmer for five minutes
Slowly add half of the water-flour mixture to the milk base and bring to a boil. Stir regularly. It will start to thicken. Add the remaining mixture. If the sauce gets too thick, add more water (½ cup at a time) and if you want it thicker, add flour (1 tbsp at a time).
Meanwhile, cut the red pepper in half and remove the stem and seeds. Brush it with olive oil – just enough to coat. Sprinkle with salt (kosher if you have it).
Put the pepper in the oven or toaster oven at 350º for approximately 15 minutes and flip itover mid-way. Remove when soft and slightly tinged with colour. Cut the roasted pepper into bite size pieces and mix into the sauce.
Over low-medium heat, stir in the tomato sauce.
After mixing in the tomato sauce, add your cheese and stir until melted.
Stir the sauce together with your al-dente cooked pasta and shove it in the oven for another 20 minutes at 375º with a little sprinkled cheese on top – we used parmesan and added some bread crumbs for texture.
Tips and Tricks
Cream sauce is delicious, but let’s not freak out about the fat content. A little secret: we make our “cream” sauce with part water instead of all cream or milk. This is just as delightful and the texture is even smoother. Or, if you want it to be super creamy, just use all cream. All the liquid ingredients are interchangeable. You can make it vegan by just adding water or soy milk. The important part is that you add some of the liquid without flour with the spices and let it thicken after it has been spiced.
FWF will be back in two weeks time with more mouth-watering recipes, and school spirit of course. ‘Til then, check their blog at mcgilldaily.com.