Relax, I’m ignoring Christmas this week. Deliberately. There’s enough of it about already.
No recipes for ornately layered concoctions of trifle for which you don’t even have the right bowl.
No choice of three stuffings for a turkey you haven’t even ordered yet.
No instructions for making your own Christmas bonbons from recycled tea-towels that only serve to make you feel guilty that you have or have not already bought bonbons. (If you haven’t, just hand out some corny jokes for people to read out instead. No point in missing out on the best part).
Did you hear about the two people who stole a calendar? They each got six months.
Instead, this week deals with something simple and delicious that you can pull together any day or night of the week between now and the end of summer. Because it’s summer that interests me, far more than Christmas.
And what could be more summery than a mess of red and yellow (not green) peppers oozing their fruity, oily juices? You can toss them in the oven and come back in half an hour and they’re practically done.
Cue lamb chops straight off the barbecue with roasted peppers.
Pile them into bread rolls with hot dogs and mustard.
Serve with slow-braised lamb shoulder and aioli.
Bake them with a lovely, cooked-down tomato sugo and eggs into shakshouka.
Or just roast them in the oven until soft, and dress with olives, preserved lemon and herbs, as per this recipe. I don’t even bother removing the skin, although if it is already offering itself, I’ll peel it off.
BAKED PEPPERS WITH OLIVES AND PRESERVED LEMON
1 red pepper
1 orange pepper
1 yellow pepper
Olive oil
2 tbsp kalamata olives, not stoned
2 petals of preserved lemon, cut into matchsticks
1 tbsp salted capers, rinsed
Handful of parsley leaves, picked
Heat the oven to 180C. Rub peppers with a little olive oil and bake whole for 30 to 35 minutes until they soften and are just about to collapse.
Transfer to a bowl, retaining any precious juices, cover and leave to cool off a bit until you can handle them.
Gently pull out the stalk, bringing the core and seeds with it, and discard.
Drain the internal juices back into the bowl. The juices are GOLD.
Cut each pepper into its natural divisions, maybe three per pepper, and arrange inside-up in a baking tray.
Make a dressing of the pepper’s juices, a few spoonfuls of olive oil, sea salt, pepper, olives, preserved lemon, capers and parsley and spoon over the peppers.
Serve at room temperature, or return to the oven to warm through for 15 minutes before serving.
Listen up: In terms of ripeness, which also means sweetness, red peppers (capsicums) are fully ripe, followed by orange then yellow peppers, which are mostly ripe. Green peppers are unripe, which accounts for them being somewhat bitter - although that can be interesting in itself. As you were.
THEN THERE’S PIPERADE, SORT OF.
Piperade is a Basque dish of fruity peppers, tomatoes and onions cooked down until sweet. It’s flavoured with one of the world’s most beautiful dried peppers – the piment d’espelette of the Basque region, which has a lovely clean, warm chilli heat.
If you don’t know it, see it here at Essential Ingredient, and keep checking in because they will have stock in again this week. If you don’t have it, use smoked paprika instead. (And Sydney folks, a heads-up: the Essential Ingredient is back in Crows Nest and it’s FABULOUS).
Piperade often has beaten eggs added at the last minute which sort of scramble themselves around the peppers.
There’s only one problem with that – it looks appalling. Tomatoes and their juices seem to bring out the worst in eggs, and I can’t cope.
Luckily there is also one solution: to cook your peppers and tomatoes first and have them ready to go, then scramble your eggs separately, and combine them only when serving them, on the plate. It’s bright, fresh, elegant and delicious.
Throw in some capers, coriander, sliced red onion and maybe some jamon or prosciutto, for a real meal deal.
PIPERADE, SORT OF: SWEET PEPPERS WITH SCRAM
For two
2 red peppers
1 yellow or orange pepper
4 tbsp good olive oil
4 smallish tomatoes, chopped
handful of coriander leaves
1 tbsp salted capers, rinsed
Half tsp piment d’espelette or smoked paprika
Scrambled eggs, below
Half red onion, finely sliced
Cut the peppers into strips, discarding core, stalk and seeds.
Gently stew them in plenty of olive oil in a large fry pan, along with chopped tomatoes, until softened but still holding their shape.
Add coriander leaves and capers, and season with sea salt, pepper and piment d’espelette or paprika; they should be oily, sweet, fruity, warm and smell amazing.
Make the scram, and divide it between two plates, and spoon the peppers on top.
Add extra coriander and red onion and serve.
TO SCRAM THE EGGS:
Lightly whisk three or four eggs with sea salt and a dash of milk.
Heat a little oil or butter in a small pan over medium heat, add the eggs and leave them alone for 20 seconds, counting.
Use a wooden paddle to push the eggs around the pean in a circular motion, rest them for 10 seconds, then continue pushing them slowly around the pan, sweeping the big, soft curds in front of the paddle, without breaking them up.
Remove while still soft, and serve as above.
“I’ve just read a book about Stockholm Syndrome. It started off badly, but by the end I really liked it.”
Thanks for reading! And special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for the jokes; they’re crackers.
I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.
Delicious
I am surprised as to how often we have the same recipes, I can’t say it is an age thing as I feel I may be a few years older than you. The roasted Capsicum are often on our table with the addition red onions and a good balsamic or Vino Cotto and perhaps some Verjuice. The Piperade, well I haven’t tried scrambled eggs normally it would be baked with the eggs until a soft yolk forms. I do love reading your descriptions as your processes are probably more professional, thinking outside the square so to speak. I do love bonbons but they have to have something decent inside, the hat and the jokes are disposed of...