Antipasti

For a while, I have owned The Wiseguy Cookbook, which was written by Henry Hill, the guy from the movie Goodfellas. His recipes sound delectable, and I finally got to try two of them: marinated mushrooms and marinated, roasted red peppers.

The process of roasting red peppers was really interesting. I broiled them at high heat until they were blackened:

They look pretty done, but honestly, I should have blackened them more. It would have made the skin come off easier. (I'll remember that for next time.) After I took off the skins, tops, and seeds, I cut them into strips and tossed them in a simple marinade of olive oil, pepper, salt, and minced garlic.

Awesome. The entire house smelled like roasted peppers when I made these. I also loved how soft and flavorful they were. This is definitely making it into the regular rotation.

The marinated mushrooms were comparably easy and flavorful. You make the marinade, then toss bite-size mushrooms into it!

The marinade is white wine vinegar, minced garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and parsley. Wiping off all those mushrooms was tedious, but it was worth it.

I let this marinate all day while we were at work. We popped a few while I made pasta for dinner tonight, and they were a nice appetizer. Marinating the mushrooms took out a lot of the things I don't like about raw mushrooms. They were soft and so much more flavorful.

As an added bonus, I chopped up some of each - the red peppers and mushrooms - and threw them into my "everything" pasta sauce tonight. It was a red sauce and penne, and also some spicy venison pieces that were leftover from venison tacos. So I guess you could say it was an antipasto pasta!