Showing posts with label frying peppers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frying peppers. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2024

ENOUGH GREEN PEPPERS

 
One-day's picking: frying peppers.

Green peppers to spare! Enough for gazpacho (only needs a small piece), for pipirrana chopped salad (maybe a couple of peppers), for stuffing (two or three per person). I’m picking a small basket of them every day or two, so it’s time to try some other favorite recipes.


We only planted one variety of pepper—Italian frying peppers. No bell peppers, no chiles. In Spain this pepper is an all-purpose variety, used for everything.

It’s a long, slim pepper, sometimes kinky; thin skinned, with crisp flesh, a bittersweet taste. Raw, frying peppers are chopped into salads such as pipirrana. They are the best pepper for sofrito, the sautéed mix of onion, garlic, peppers, and tomatoes that is the starting point for so many dishes in Spanish cooking, from paella to stew. Oh, yes, they are also used for frying.

The peppers are not fried crisp, but cooked in oil until they are completely tender, only lightly browned. Serve them hot or room temperature as a tapa, with bread to accompany. Use them as a side with grilled meat or fish. Heap them on a burger or make a serranito, a classic sandwich of pork loin, serrano ham, fried peppers, and alioli (garlic mayo). 

Fried peppers, tapa bar-style.

Classic serranito sandwich--fried peppers, pork loin, cured ham, and alioli.

Fried Green Peppers
Pimientos Fritos

Fry peppers in one layer.

You only need about ½ inch of oil in a large skillet. Heat the oil very hot, then reduce the heat. Place the peppers in a single layer in the skillet. If hot oil tends to splatter as peppers release their water, partially cover the pan. Fry the peppers until they are limp and the skins wrinkled and very lightly browned, 20 to 30 minutes. Repeat with additional batches. The peppers can be served hot, room temperature or cold. They can be packed in sealed bags and frozen.

To eat the peppers, tapa bar-style, hold a pepper by the stem and lower it into your mouth. Bite off the pepper; discard the stem and seeds. 



12 peppers
Olive oil for frying
Flaky salt

Wash and dry the peppers. Leave them whole, but cut a slit in their tips. Heat oil to a depth of ½ inch in a large skillet. Place peppers in the oil in a single layer and lower the heat to medium. If hot oil splatters, partially cover the pan. Fry the peppers slowly until wrinkly and beginning to brown, then turn them and fry the reverse side. Fry the peppers until completely limp, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove and drain on paper towels. Continue frying remaining peppers. Sprinkle them while hot with salt.

Serranito Sandwich
Bocata de Serranito

Fried green peppers add a special touch to this sandwich with pork loin and ham. Sliced tomato is optional. 


Use a crusty sandwich roll (bollo) or a section of baguette for the serranito. Split it open and toast the halves in a toaster or on a plancha. Spread with alioli (garlic mayonnaise), plain mayo or olive oil with crushed garlic. 

Remove stem and seeds from the fried peppers before adding to the sandwich. If desired, the peppers can be skinned as well. 

Makes 1 sandwich

1-2 thin slices boneless pork loin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
Crusty sandwich roll (bollo), toasted
Alioli or mayonnaise
2-3 fried green peppers
Thinly sliced serrano or ibérico ham
Slices tomato (optional)

Alioli or mayo from a squeeze bottle on toasted roll.
Sprinkle the sliced pork loin with salt and pepper. Cook them quickly on a lightly oiled plancha or skillet until lightly browned. Remove.

Split the sandwich roll in half. Spread with alioli or mayonnaise. Put the pork loin slices on the bottom half. Remove stems and seeds from the peppers and heap them on top of the pork. Add sliced ham and tomato, if using. Cover with the other half of the roll. Place the sandwich on a cutting board and slice it in half.


More peppers to come!

More ways to use green peppers:

Piperade (Piparrada). (Make the piperade with all green frying peppers)




Saturday, August 19, 2017

OH, THOSE KINKY PEPPERS!

One of summer’s delights are the many kinds of capsicum peppers—bell peppers in stop-and-go semáforo colors, red, yellow and green; chiles from hot to mild; stubby green Padrón peppers, and kinky, crinkly, skinny, green Italian frying peppers. 


Kinky green frying peppers. Choose straight ones for stuffing.

The green frying peppers are especially abundant and popular in local cooking. They’re fried whole and served as a tapa or side with grilled meat. They’re a basic ingredient in sofrito. Chopped raw peppers go into gazpacho and into pipirrana and piriñaca salads. They’re even used for stuffing.

These peppers are thin skinned and thin fleshed. Their crisp texture makes them ideal for using raw in salads. Many are twisted, even kinky. Their flavor is bittersweet and fruity, not hot.

I decided to stuff a bunch of these green peppers. Instead of the usual meat or meat plus ham stuffing, I chose a filling of canned bonito. Bonito del norte is white albacore tuna. Canned in olive oil, bonito has completely replaced canned tuna—endangered blue-fin—in my cupboard. This is an easy stuffing mixture to make with what you’ve got in the pantry. For stuffing, choose the less kinky specimens of peppers.

Once filled, the peppers are lightly fried in olive oil before being finished in a fresh tomato sauce. Frying adds flavor and blisters the peppers’ thin skin, which all but disappears during cooking.

Peppers stuffed with tuna are first fried, then simmered in fresh tomato sauce.

Stuffed peppers, a summertime treat. These are filled with canned albacore tuna.

Kids will love these tuna-stuffed peppers served with pasta.


Peppers Stuffed with Tuna
Pimientos Rellenos con Bonito

White albacore tuna from a can.
5-6 (6-inch) green frying peppers
1/3 cup fresh bread crumbs
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
2 cups tomato sauce (recipe follows)
2 cups drained canned tuna, flaked
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
Salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten
Olive oil for frying
Pasta for serving (optional)


Remove stems and seeds from the peppers. Press the stem in until it breaks free. Pull the stem out with the seeds. Shake out remaining seeds.

Push stem in to release seeds.

Pull seeds out.












Place the bread crumbs in a small bowl and add the milk to soften them.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a skillet and sauté the onion on medium heat until softened, 5 minutes. Squeeze out the breadcrumbs, discarding the milk. Add the bread to the skillet. Add 3 tablespoons of the tomato sauce and the tuna. Remove from heat. Add the parsley and season with salt and pepper. (Salt may not be needed, as canned tuna is fairly salty.) Stir in the beaten egg. Let the mixture cool.

Fry the stuffed peppers lightly before finishing in sauce.
Fill the peppers with the tuna stuffing mixture. Use a spoon or skewer to push it in. 

Heat enough oil to cover the bottom of a deep skillet. Fry the peppers, turning, until they are lightly browned and blistered on all sides. Remove. Pour off remaining oil.

Add the tomato sauce to the skillet or to a cazuela and place the peppers on top. Cook, partially covered to prevent splattering, 15 minutes. Turn the peppers over and cook 15 minutes more. The tomato sauce should thicken, but don’t allow the peppers to scorch.

Serve the peppers hot or room temperature, with pasta, if desired.


Stuffed peppers and tomato sauce are good served with pasta.

Fresh Tomato Sauce
Salsa de Tomate Fresco

Fresh tomato sauce, ready for many uses.

No need to peel the tomatoes before making the sauce, as later it gets pureed and sieved. The sauce keeps, covered and refrigerated, up to a week.

Makes about 2 cups sauce.

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup coarsely chopped onion
1 carrot, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4 cups coarsely chopped plum tomatoes (about 1 ¾ pounds)
¼ cup white wine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper


Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan and sauté the onion, carrot and garlic. Add the tomatoes, wine and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer the sauce, partially covered, until thick, 30 minutes.

Puree the sauce in a blender and pass it through a sieve, discarding the skins and seeds.

More recipes for peppers—piquillo, Padrón and bell.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

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.