Tony’s Restaurant Roasted Red Pepper Ragu Sauce

You might have heard of shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it… until now! It’s a crispy little shrimp patty, sittin’ on garlic bread like it’s a porch swing, with a creamy white sauce that they call béchamel, but I just called it real nice. Then they went and put pickled onions, radishes, cucumbers, and a little green leaf called basil on top. It was fresh, crunchy, and made my mouth feel like it ran all the way to Greenbow and back.

Ingredients

4 Red Peppers
1 Onion (cut in half and peeled)
4 Large Tomatoes (cut in half and cored)
4-5 cloves Garlic Peeled

1/4 cup fresh Basil Leaves
1/4 cup Olive Oil (plus 1 tbsp more)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
6 Sweet Italian Sausages
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

On a charcoal grill with medium hot coals, a gas grill on medium heat, or oven pre-heated to 375 degrees, place the onion and tomato halves cut side down, whole red peppers directly on the grill (or cookie sheet if using an oven)
Poke several holes in the sausage casing and coat with olive oil. Place on grill or cookie sheet in the oven
Wrap the cloves of garlic in foil, season with salt and pepper and coat with olive oil. Place on the grill or oven.
Cook for 20-25 minutes turning in the middle of the cook time. The sausages should be golden brown, the peppers should be blistered.
Place the peppers in a paper bag to steam, set sausages aside, and place the onion, tomatoes and garlic in a blender with the olive oil and parmesan cheese
Let the peppers sit for 5 minutes in the paper bag to steam. Remove the peppers from the bag and peel the skin off and de-stem and de-seed the peppers. Add the pepper flesh to the blender
Blend vegetable smooth in blender
Cut the sausages into rounds
Pour the blender vegetable puree into a large dutch oven, add the sausage rounds and tear the basil leaves to add to the pot.
Bring mixture to a simmer. Simmer 10 minutes.
Serve over pasta.