Paccheri with roasted red pepper sauce and fresh artichokes: I made this pasta for a friend at his house, and aside from the brand of pasta I used falling apart (NOT my fault), it came out pretty well. Here’s how you make it:

Throw two nice, firm, fresh red peppers in some foil (tented) and put them in an oven at 375 or 400 degrees. Take them out after 30-45 minutes, when th skin has wrinkled or blackened in places and they have let go of some of their juices. Reserve the juices into a food processor, peel them by hand (still reserving juices, they have lots of flavor), remove the seeds and put the meat of the pepper into the food processor. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil, a heavy pinch of salta, and some fresh cracked pepper. Puree.

Boil twice as much water as you think you need unless you really do know what you’re doing. When it comes to a boil, salt it heavily. Add the paccheri (Large, one inch in length tubes of pasta that collapse when cooked trapping the sauce), cook al dente.

Meanwhile, you’ve got the red pepper sauce simmering just a tad in a sautee pan and you’ve added some pomodoro sauce you had reserved in your refrigerator (that you made with san marzano tomatoes) so that it’s about 2/3rds red pepper puree and 1/3rd tomato sauce. You can use another tomato sauce, but I won’t be happy about it.

You add the fresh artichoke hearts you prepped earlier by throwing cleaned artichokes into boiling, salted water for about 35 minutes and then cleaning them so it’s just the hearts and stems and then quartered them. They warm up in the red pepper sauce, and you add the al dente pasta, and toss it really really well in the sautee pan. Add a few tablespoons of creme fraiche, serve onto a plate and grate fresh ricotta salata on top generously. Call it dinner.

Along with rediscovering some cookbooks this month (like the book of Mexican family recipes I have, or my Culinaria Italy), I’ve decided I’m going to outdo my slacker college career and read some classics this month, with the help of DailyLit, a great free service that emails you portions of classic books daily. I’m also finishing up Perfume (which I got from the public library, thank you very much), and Anthony Bourdain’s second book.

It’s been a great few months of culture here in the bay area with lots of new culinary adventures (Bar Crudo, among others in the city–see my Yelp) and far more music events than I’ve probably had in my lifetime. As summer dwindles away I’m thinking about persimmons and root vegetables and soups and hopefully we’ll have something great to talk about soon.