Finally, $1 capsicums, yay!! From a high of $4.50 per piece, summer is the inflation-buster we all need.

I don’t particularly like capsicums- in my mouth, I can feel the soft inner flesh separating from the plasticky outer skin- though I tolerate them in stir-fries and such. I also don’t eat pasta a lot; if I wanted carbs, I’ll just do rice thank you very much.

But I saw someone on TikTok making a red-pepper (aka capsicum) sauce for pasta and then I got a supermarket alert for specials ($1 capsicums!) so I thought that it was meant to be.

The good thing about this sauce is that you don’t need a whole lot of ingredients (and the costs do add up). It’s basically 3 large capsicums and the rest of the ingredients are stuff you may already have at home like garlic, shallots (if you don’t have these it’s fine), butter and chicken cubes. Cheese which is normally horrendously expensive was on special so I got a block of good parmesan.

You simply char the capsicums so that you can peel off the nasty, plasticky outer skin and I realised that I couldn’t really do it as pictured below, using the electric cooktop. So I ended up putting it in the oven using grill. So once you’ve peeled the skin off and taken out the seeds. sauté them in a pan with a bit of olive oil and butter, a chicken cube and diced garlic (shallots if you have them) for about 10 minutes. Blitz the whole thing in a food-processor- it didn’t even need water or a thickening agent; the puree is the perfect consistency. And the flavour- sweet, creamy with a hint of spice and tang. I admit adding two tablespoons of sour cream, but it didn’t really need it, nor the parmesan if I’m being honest.

I’m thinking of buying a whole bag of $1 capsicums now, prepping them ready for blitzing and stored in the freezer.