Creamy Red Pepper Sauce

I was looking for a pasta sauce recipe that wasn't cream-based, because I just noticed that about 112% of my recipes are, when I found this one...

...which is totally cream-based but shhhh. It has vegetables in it! I made a few changes from the original recipe by making it a bit easier, reducing the dirty dishes (oh what, you have a dishwasher? How awesome for you, person-who-sucks), and increasing the vegetable-to-cream ratio.

Ingredients:

• 2 red bell peppers, or any combination of red, orange, and yellow
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced (or more - you can't have too much garlic, that's my motto)
• 1 tbsp dried basil (or a big 'ole handful of fresh basil, chopped, if you've got it) (or probably a spoonful of pesto, mmmm, I bed that'd be great)
  
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 1/4 cup Romano or Parmesan cheese
• 1-2 tbsp butter
• Red pepper flakes, or cayenne pepper
• Chili powder
• Salt and pepper
  
• Olive oil (I never really measure olive oil. Like garlic: it's hard to have too much)

Preheat your broiler. Or preheat your absurdly tiny oven which pretty much is a broiler. Cut your bell peppers in half and remove the seeds, then brush both sides with olive oil and let them roast until the skin has some black spots and the flesh is tender. Then let them sit, in a sealed plastic baggie if you're really on top of things, (or just on a paper towel in the fridge if you're me not) for about 45 minutes.

Heat some olive oil in a skillet. Remove the skin from the peppers and throw them in the skillet with the garlic, the basil, and the spices. You can purée this mixture later if you want a really smooth sauce, but if you prefer to minimize your dirty dishes then just mash up the peppers with your spoon as you cook the mixture for about 10 minutes over medium heat.

Then add the cream and cheese and stir until it's all a uniformly gorgeous orange-y color. Add the butter, more or less depending on how much you care about your arteries, stir it again, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve over pasta or whatever, seriously, you could actually just eat this sauce by the spoonful.

It's particularly good with cheese ravioli.