Pasta with Bell Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes and Arugula (rocket salad) is one of those colorful and full of flavor dishes, that I love to prepare. You can prepare it in two ways, the first one is as indicated in this recipe, where you will first need to prepare bell pepper sauce. So it will take you about 30 to 40 minutes to prepare this meal, but if you don’t have much time, you can just slice the peppers and add them with other ingredients and it will be ready in 15 minutes. But of course, the taste is completely different. I love preparing bell pepper sauce because it pairs nicely with many veggie ingredients. One of my favorite recipes is risotto with bell peppers, it is such a creamy risotto packed with flavor. So I use the same method for preparing bell pepper sauce for pasta. In this recipe, I added cherry tomatoes and arugula. I use arugula often with pasta dishes because it is a perfect and flavorful go-to ingredient for different kinds of pasta dishes.

As in many other dishes, I added pumpkin seeds, because they give a splendid texture and crunchiness to the dish. But if you haven’t got pumpkin seeds at home, use any other type of seeds like sunflower, flax, sesame seeds… And the best thing I like about this light recipe is that you can eat it cold or warm, it doesn’t matter, it will be super tasty either way. This kind of recipe is perfect for hot summer days, prepare it few hours before, store it in the fridge and you will have a truly exquisite light lunch., trust me 🙂

One of the things I recommend you to do is to drain the pasta 2 minutes before indicated on the package and add it to the sauce and then cook for another minute if you like the pasta to be “al dente”, tossing well. I usually add arugula at the end, but you can add half of it with tomatoes, few minutes before the sauce is ready and the other half at the end together with pumpkin seeds. Another thing I wanted to mention is that I always peel the bell peppers when preparing the sauce because that way they are easier to digest and I really don’t like its skin in the sauce.

If you chose to prepare this recipe, let me know what you think! Enjoy your meal!