FRIDGE FORAGE

 Everyone cleared out and left me to my own devices. In cleaning out two fridges I found all sorts of foods that needed to be consumed or pitched. Unopened bags of Padrón peppers someone had bought when we were already inundated with green peppers from the garden. Three kinds of chorizo. Some cooked pasta. Half a jar of chickpeas. Leftovers from a photo shoot: carrot salad, meatballs and stale bread. Several egg whites left over from ice cream making. 

Too much chorizo.

The crisper was the most alarming. Besides those Padrón peppers, a carton of radishes and half a cabbage, still extant, vegetables from the garden were piling up. Zucchini, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. 

The selection suggested my favorite summer vegetable dish, pisto, a medley of sautéd vegetables. Pisto, also known as fritada (Aragón), samfaina (Catalonia), tumbet (Mallorca), and ratatouille (France), can be freely varied, vegetarian or with meat or fish. I made a big panful of pisto, then turned it into four different meals. 

Pisto ingredients.

Pisto Plus. Chop and sauté in olive oil onions, garlic, green and red peppers, eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes. Add other vegetables, raw or cooked—squash, carrots, greens, mushrooms, potatoes and a large etcetera. How about those radishes? I added some quartered radishes to the mix. Nope. Once radishes lose their red color and their bite, they are pretty dull. 

Carrot salad with raisins.

Variations on the variations: Instead of chopped tomatoes, use tomato sauce or even leftover gazpacho. Choose your favorite herb: oregano, basil, parsley, mint, cilantro. Add chopped serrano ham or bacon to the basic pisto.   I threw in a cupful of  Carrot Salad with Raisins and Pine Nuts which were a real plus in this pisto mélange.  

1. Pisto with Meatballs (Pisto con Albóndigas)

I just happened to have 72 fried meatballs in a Tupper in the fridge. I added a few to the pisto. The rest will freeze to see another day. 

Reheat leftover cooked meatballs in the pisto. Season with favorite hot sauce. Serve with chopped parsley or cilantro. Or, add soy sauce, ginger, vinegar and Sherry to the pisto and make the dish sort-of Asian.

Basic pisto vegetables + carrot-raisin-pine nuts + meatballs.

2. Pasta with Pisto and Chorizo.

Leftover pasta gets resuscitated, served with pisto plus chorizo.

Best way to rejuvenate cooked pasta: put it in a heatproof bowl and add boiling water to cover. Soak 5 minutes and drain. Fry chopped chorizo, add pisto to the pan and heat. Serve over pasta and grate cheese on top.

Pasta, pisto and chorizo. Finish with fresh basil.

3. Eggs Scrambled with Pisto (Huevos Revueltos con Pisto)

Scramble eggs and pisto.

Heat pisto in a skillet. Stir in 2 eggs (or 1 egg and 2 egg whites). Cook on medium while mixing the egg into the vegetables. Serve hot with fried bread. 

Egg and vegetable scramble.

That leftover stale bread? Turn it into picatostes--croutons or strips of bread fried in olive oil. Once fried they keep well. Serve fried bread with eggs, with vegetables or as dippers with cheese dips. Transform the croutons into crumbs in a mini food processor and use the crispy crumbs as topping for vegetables or pasta.  

4. Pisto with Chickpeas (Pisto/Alboronía con Garbanzos)

This is an actual dish called alboronía that, besides the sautéd vegetables, often includes pear or apple. Reheat the cooked pisto with the chopped fruit and drained and rinsed cooked chickpeas. Season with cumin, smoked pimentón (paprika) and a dash of vinegar. Serve it with pine nuts and, if desired, quartered hard-boiled egg. 

Peppers tipo Padrón (same variety as the famed Galician peppers, but not grown in Padrón)--Remove stems and seeds, place on a tray and freeze, then bag them and store in freezer. They're ready for frying or adding to soups and stews. 

More interpretations of pisto:

Pork and Vegetable Stew.

Pan-Fried Hake Fillets with Pisto.

Vegetable and Mackerel Dish.

Pisto with Lamb and Couscous.

Recipes with leftovers:
Fried Bread Crisps.

"Old Clothes" Hash (Ropa Vieja).

Bone Broth and Vegetable Soup.

Chicken, Orange and Olive Salad.

PEPPERS FOR FRYING

How to eat a fried pepper.

Hold it by the stem and dangle the fried pepper over your mouth. Eat it whole, throw away the stem. Have another. Fried green peppers are a late-summer treat all over Spain. They are served as tapas—so good with a cold caña, draft beer—or as a side dish with steak, chops or fried eggs.

Long and kinky or short and stubby—two sorts of peppers are used for frying.

Thin-skinned frying peppers.

The ordinary green pepper (elsewhere called “Italian” frying pepper, though I bet they were Spanish before they were Italian) is skinny, often curled or twisted, with a pointy tip. It is thin-skinned and crisp, not fleshy like a bell pepper. The frying pepper is bittersweet in taste, not at all hot.

This is the pepper commonly used in a sofrito, a sauté of onions, peppers, garlic and tomatoes that starts off many a Spanish dish.

Padrón peppers.

The other frying pepper is the famous pimiento de Padrón, a very small green pepper grown in Galicia in northwest Spain (and now elsewhere in the world as well; see http://www.tienda.com/food/products/vg-08.html ). Padrón, where the peppers originated, is a town not far from Santiago de Compostela. They are picked when still tiny (1 ½ to 1 ¾  inches).

Padrón peppers are related to jalapeños, which they somewhat resemble, but the “hot” has been gradually bred out of them. Well, not entirely. The peppers are famed for their flavor and the Russian-roulette chance that about one in ten is a fiery-hot chile. The smaller and earlier peppers are least likely to be spicy-hot. Later in the season, as the peppers mature, more will be hot. As a Galician saying has it, “The peppers of Padrón, some bite and others don’t.”

Incidentally, if you didn’t already know, Spanish food is nothing like the spicy-hot food of Mexico. Chile is used in very few dishes and then very judiciously.

Fried pimientos de Padrón.

So, how to fry peppers? The medium is olive oil and the only seasoning is sea salt. Don’t expect crisp or crunchy. Fried peppers emerge from the oil limp and toothsome.

I learned to make fried peppers in tapa bar kitchens in the village where I live. There I was instructed to make a slit in the bottom end of each frying pepper and rub a pinch of salt inside each one, then fry them slowly in olive oil until tender. The slit  prevents steam from accumulating. However, the smaller Padrón peppers are fried whole.

Pimientos de Padrón
Fried Padrón Peppers

Don’t let the oil get too hot—the peppers should not brown.

Serves 6 as a tapa or side dish.

1 pound Padrón peppers (75 to 100 peppers)
Olive oil for frying
Coarse salt, to serve

Wash the peppers and dry them thoroughly. Place oil in a large frying pan to a depth of ¾ inch. Place on medium heat. Fry the peppers in two batches, carefully turning them in the oil, until they are wrinkled and soft, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Skim the peppers out and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with salt. Serve hot or room temperature.

Peppers at a tapa bar, ready for frying to order.