Mediterranean roasted peppers

Roasted peppers are a great addition to salads, pastas and pizzas. You will find recipes telling you to char them in the oven then put them in plastic bags to sweat the skins off. You could do that, but here is a much simpler method that uses vinegar to soften the skins. It is possibly a little more traditional than using plastic bags 🙂

First the peppers. Green, yellow and red peppers are all the same thing at different stages of ripeness. The red ones are the ripest and sweetest while the green ones are more bitter, but great in Asian dishes. For this recipe use red peppers.

Peppers grown in hothouses tend to be thin fleshed and tasteless (that goes for pointed ones as well) so try and get fleshy peppers grown in a Southern Europe. The ones sold in Aldi and Lidl are usually ok.

Ingredients

• Two red peppers
• Two tablespoon of olive oil – more if you like.
• One tablespoon of Balsamic or Organic Cider vinegar.

Method

• Half the peppers lengthwise.
• Remove the seeds and stalks.
• Cut the peppers into 1 cm strips. Bigger if you want them chunky.
• Put the oil, peppers, and vinegar in a pot with a lid.
• Cook on a medium heat until the peppers are soft and floppy. The time will depend on how much water is in them, allow about 30 minutes.
• If they were very watery peppers and there is a lot of juice, scoop out the peppers and boil the juice to reduce it so that there is enough to coat the peppers and keep them moist.
• The roasted peppers will last for several days in a fridge.

And…

• Try adding a clove or two of garlic.
• Try adding a deseeded chilli to spice them up.