piedmont roasted peppers

My variation on a recipe originally published by Elizabeth David in Italian Food, then Delia Smith in her Summer Cooking.

Where the original recipe calls for anchovy, I use a teaspoon of tapenade (black olive paste) per pepper. As tapenade often contains capers, this seems to substitute well for the saltiness of the anchovies. And it makes the whole dish fine for veggies.

I took a whole tray of these to Jo's garden party in les Pilles last September, and they went down a storm.

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Ingredients

4 large red peppers (green are not suitable)
4 medium tomatoes
8 tinned anchovy fillets, drained
2 cloves garlic
8 dessertspoons Italian extra virgin olive oil
freshly milled black pepper
To serve: small bunch fresh basil leaves

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4, 350°F (180°C).

For this it is essential to use a good, solid, shallow roasting tray, 16 x 12 inches (40 x 30 cm). If the sides are too deep, the roasted vegetables won't get those lovely, nutty, toasted edges.

Begin by cutting the peppers in half and removing the seeds but leaving the stalks intact (they're not edible but they do look attractive and they help the pepper halves to keep their shape). Lay the pepper halves in the lightly oiled roasting tray. Now 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 into 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 1 dessertspoon of olive oil into each pepper, season with freshly milled pepper (but no salt because of the anchovies) and place the tray 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 do need good bread to go with them as the juices are sublime – focaccia would be perfect.

This recipe is taken from Delia Smith’s Summer Collection.