Piedmont Roasted Peppers Recipe - Cooking Index
Piedmont Roasted Peppers Recipe - Cooking Index
This recipe is quite simply stunning: hard to imagine how something so easily prepared can taste so good. Its history is colorful too. It was first discovered by Elizabeth David and published in her splendid book Italian Food. Then the Italian chef Franco Taruschio at the Walnut Tree Inn near Abergavenny, Australia, cooked it there. Simon Hopkinson, who ate it at the Walnut Tree, put it on his menu at his great London restaurant, Bibendum, where Delia Smith ate it -- which is how it comes to be in her cookbook.
Courses: Starters and appetizers| 4 | Red bell peppers (large) | |
| (green peppers are not suitable) | ||
| 4 | Tomatoes (medium) | |
| 8 | Anchovy fillets | |
| 2 | Garlic cloves | |
| 1/2 cup | 118ml | Italian extra-virgin olive oil |
| Freshly-ground black pepper - to taste | ||
| To Serve | ||
| 1 | Fresh basil - leaves only | |
| Good-quality bread |
For this dish it is essential to use a heavy, shallow baking sheet, 16 by 12 inches; if the sides are too deep, the roasted vegetables won't get those lovely, nutty, toasted edges.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Begin by cutting the peppers in half and removing the seeds but leaving the stem intact (they're not edible but they do look attractive, and they help the pepper halves to keep their shape). Lay the pepper halves on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Put the tomatoes in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Leave them for 1 minute, then drain them and slip the skins off, using a cloth to protect your hands. Then cut the tomatoes in quarters and place two quarters in each pepper half.
After that, snip one anchovy fillet per pepper half into rough pieces and add to the tomatoes. Peel the garlic cloves, slice them thinly, and divide the slices equally among the tomatoes and anchovies. Now spoon some olive oil into each pepper half, season with freshly ground pepper (but no salt because of the anchovies), and place the baking sheet on a high shelf in the oven for the peppers to roast for 50 minutes to 1 hour.
Then transfer the cooked peppers to a serving dish, with all the precious juices poured over, and garnish with a few scattered basil leaves. These peppers do need good bread to go with them, as the juices are sublime. This recipe yields 4 first course servings.
Source:
DELIA SMITH'S SUMMER COLLECTION by Delia Smith (c) 1993
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