I made this last night and it came out pretty great. It seems like the last few times I’ve cooked with Norman over, things have came out kind of “meh”. I was happy to have what I considered a success on my hands.

Ziti with Sausage Gazpacho Sauce
Via Epicurious

• 10 tbsp olive oil
• 1 1/2 lbs tomatoes, cubed – the original calls for cherry, I used romas from our garden.
• 3 bell peppers, cored and quartered – go crazy on the colors
• 2 medium red onions, cut in to six to eight wedges
• 2 lbs zucchini,  (4 medium - I had 2 monsters from the garden), trimmed and quatered lengthwise
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 4 mild to hot Italian sausages
• 3 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 pound ziti pasta
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 cup crumbled ricotta

Preheat the broiler on your oven. Make sure racks are 4 to 6 inches from the heat source.

Lay out zucchini, onions, bell peppers, and garlic on roasting pans (I needed two separate ones to fit everything). Coat everything in olive oil, and about a tablespoon of salt and pepper. Make sure to mix everything well on the pans. Rotating pans and tossing vegetables every few minutes, cook until tender and charred. The whole process takes 8-12 minutes, and depends on how hot your oven is. Keep an eye on everything, but a little bit of charring is delicious. The original recipe has the tomatoes grilling/roasting a bit too, but I didn’t have any room left on my pans. It tasted fine without the extra step. Note that if you do roast them, they will only need to be in for 3 to 4 minutes.

After roasting, chop the zucchini, bell peppers, and onion in to bite sized pieces. The recipe called for peeling the peppers, but they were being difficult for me. If I had roasted them longer, the skins would probably have slipped off easier. It tastes just fine without the extra step.

Add 2 bell pepper halves and 2 zucchini halves to a blender. Add garlic, 1/2 of  the onion, vinegar, sugar, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, half of tomatoes, and 1/4 cup oil and purée until smooth. Transfer the remainder of the vegetables to a large bowl with tomatoes and cover with foil to keep warm.

Start heating water to cook the ziti. Cook pasta in boiling, salted water for roughly 10 minutes.

Lightly oil sausages and place on a grill rack in the broiler. Cook for 10-12 minutes until browned, turning midway through cooking. Slice sausages into bite sized pieces and add to bowl with vegetables.

Drain pasta and toss with vegetables, ricotta, herbs, and sauce from blender. Serve.

P.S. – I’m not totally sure what the etiquette is for these kinds of net based recipes. I don’t want to look like I’m just ripping them off, but I am in a way. I don’t really have the confidence to stray from and original recipe too much yet. I’ve been teaching myself how to cook new things and I just wanted to share some of the successes. I try to note where my path was different or if things didn’t turn out as planned whenever possible. If you guys have any thoughts on it, let me know.

What’s next?

My full time job has been feeling the stress of the economy, so we’ve been asked to take on one “free” day a month, unpaid. I’m not excited about the hit in pay, but it is nice that I’m able to take it whenever I want to. Next Monday I am going to head out with Chris and Matt to ride the Sunrise permanent. We plan on riding to the start from home which should put it at a little over 300K.

I’ve been wanting to ride this permanent since we started doing these things. For one reason or another, it just never fell into place. I’ll do my best to snap a photo or two.

It is interesting to note that we need to make it to the “start” of the permanent in Black Diamond by 7am. That means that we need to give ourselves a couple of hours of buffer to ride down the trails from South Park. I’m hoping that 4:30 is early enough, I don’t think I can handle something even earlier than that.

This is one of my last chances to get a long ride in before the Mountain Pass 600K. This is basically the same route that I DNF’d last year (which, oddly enough, is a very fun read for me), except now with a night time start (ugh) and no drop bag service this time around. I would be lying to you if I said that it didn’t scare me a little bit. It took me a stupid amount of time to climb Mt. St. Helens last time. I think I spent over 4 hours going up the damn thing. It should be pretty interesting in the dark anyways. Truth be told, I am very excited about it. I just feel like I have something to prove after the last failed attempt.

You can also check out my pictures from last year. This ride is nothing if not amazingly beautiful. I’ve already promised Norman that he won’t have to drive 6 some odd hours to come pick me up this year… *cough*

Not to put pressure on Dan, but he seems pretty confident that my bike will be ready for this ride too. I’ve already broken the “don’t ride a new bike” laws on rando rides twice. I would most certainly do it a third if given the opportunity.