"THIS DISH NEEDS SOMETHING - BUT WHAT?"

Beans. It needs beans.

This common household dilemma can usually be resolved in the amount of time it takes to open a can of beans.

When a grill from the barbecue and a leafy green salad don’t feel substantial enough. Or you have a lovely piece of fish but you had potatoes last night, rice doesn’t feel right, and you don’t want noodles.

So there I was, roasting a couple of red peppers, tomatoes and red onion as something to have with my proposed grilled calamari, when I realised that it wasn’t enough. It needed beans.

Here’s the so-simple-she-must-be-joking way to add beans to your smoky, fruity roasted red peppers, to have with chicken, prawns, or grilled calamari  (“or sausage,” suggests Terry in the background). You just add them. Then toss them through those golden, oily pan juices with whatever herbs you have to hand.

Having thrown that together, I realised I was onto something. I wanted more.

More beans. I love the creaminess of cannellini beans, the crimson duskiness of red kidney beans, and the Texy-Mexiness of black beans, so why not put them all together? Then I found a nifty little can of three-bean mix at the supermarket with red kidney, lima and black beans, for a dollar.

So I went over the border, down Mexico way. Roasted the peppers, garlic, tomato and red onion, then tossed them with pickled jalapeno peppers and my three-bean mix, and scattered the lot with coriander and lime. 

All three-bean mixes are different. Many are four-bean mixes. I really, really wanted black beans that were black and not pinto beans which are sort of red, so I bought a can of black beans and tossed them in as well. The things you do.

ROASTED RED PEPPERS WITH ONE, TWO OR THREE BEANS.

(NOT SO MUCH A RECIPE. MORE OF AN ATTITUDE.)

Because the right attitude will actually get dinner on the table faster.

1/ Cut a couple of large red capsicum into six wedges each, trim out the core and seeds, and arrange on a baking tray.

2/ Add a handful of small tomatoes (skin pierced with the tip of a knife, so they don’t explode, or halved), a handful of unpeeled garlic cloves, a roughly chopped red onion and whatever herbs are around, and sea salt, pepper, dried oregano, and a big douse of good olive oil.

3/ Into a 180C oven for 45 minutes, giving the tray a shuffle once or twice to move them around. When the peppers smell amazing and are soft and rich and fleshy – which may or may not be 45 minutes - and the tomatoes are juicy, drain off the cooking juices into a small bowl (don’t toss ’em, they’re gold).

4/ At this point, you can choose to take out the tray and throw a tea-towel over it for 10 minutes to steam the peppers a bit more, then peel off their skins - which makes for a softer, glossier red pepper outcome but is not entirely necessary.

5/ Open a can of say, cannellini beans, or a three-bean mix, drain and rinse, and add the beans to the tray. Squish the soft garlicky puree out of the cloves, and squish one or two of the tomatoes for their juices, then use a couple of spoons to toss everything together.

6/ Bung the tray back in the oven for 10 minutes to warm the beans (if you want), then pour those beautiful pan juices back over everything, scatter with extra herbs, and there you go: soft, sweet roasted onions fruity peppers, juicy tomatoes, fragrant garlic, and creamy beans in every forkful.

To Tex-Mexicanise, add pickled jalapeno chillies and coriander and hot sauce, and serve with corn chips and salsa.

Oops, forgot the coriander.

And the limes.

You could also:

• Blend a third of the roasted pepper mixture (having squeezed the garlic from the cloves) into a creamy dip, then pile the remaining peppers and beans on top.

• Add a few furls of salami or prosciutto to turn that into an excellent weekend brunch.

• Pile the left-overs onto crispbread or toast with a swoosh of feta yoghurt for the office lunch.

Or serve the roasted red peppers the way executive chef Mark Glenn does at the new Carlotta in Canberra, steeped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and striped with Cantabrian anchovies (thanks, chef).

I could only imagine how good they would have been with beans.

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Thanks for dropping by! And as always, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Terry for going through the store’s entire stock of red peppers to get me the reddest (which are the ripest).

I would 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, and pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to the continuing strength and resilience of First Nations people, communities and cultures.