Preparing Olives & Peppers for Gourmet Pasta with Sausage & Peppers

Video Transcript

"PAMELA BOWMAN: I've got some of these great, dry, Italian-cured olives, and I've already pitted them with this really cool little device. It's a pitter and it's for cherries but it works great with olives. So I just want to run my knife through the olives. This is going to add some really nice flavor to this pasta, very earthy, very Italian. Little salty but not too briny and it's just a nice rough chop, so I can put these back into our bowl. The nice thing about this recipe is that you can add and subtract to it. If you don't like olives, you don't have to put in olives. If you happen to like calamari, you can put a calamari in. If you're into green olives with pimientos be my guest. This recipe is for you to have fun with because this is all about comfort. I happen to like red bell peppers, roasted red bell peppers, so I'm going to put a little bit of roasted red bell pepper into my pasta. And I'm going to just cut this up, again, kind of a rough chop. Oh, they smell great. This is so Italian. Who would have thought a little chef named Blondie would know how to cook Italian-style, huh? Okay, that's beautiful. A couple more little pieces here, just chop them up real fast. Do you notice when the fingers are in the right place and your hand is really comfortable and you're holding the knife right, how quickly the chopping goes? As long as you know you've got a safe control on the knife and your fingers are tucked behind, you have nothing to worry about. You can chop away. Okay. Next thing I want to do is run a knife through some roasted eggplant. I'm going to wipe by board off and wash my hands, so I'll be right back."