DIANA HENRY
ROASTED PEPPERS
Take a jar of this bright and smoky storecupboard ingredient and try Diana Henry’s inventive recipes photographs KIM LIGHTBODY
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here was a time in Britain, though it’s hard to believe, before roasted Mediterranean vegetables. Pre-1980s we were unfamiliar with the olive-oil-rich flesh of meaty roasted aubergines, or the charred smokiness of wedges of red onion. I first ate them in Bertorelli’s in London in 1984, and soon after spotted a recipe for them that I pounced on. The mixture was just so good, the way the vegetables sucked up the oil, garlic and herbs with which they’d been cooked. It’s not surprising they’ve become such a mainstay. They’re colourful, healthy and even looking at a platter will get your juices flowing. I’m not keen on solo dining but I used to eat in Carluccio’s Caffè on my own – long ago, before the chain was sold – just so that I could have a plateful of roast vegetables and a mattress of focaccia. Of all the vegetables that are drizzled with oil and bunged in the oven, it’s roasted peppers that are the most loved. Their flesh is silky. Cut into strips they can be tossed
with pasta, stirred into risotto or stuffed in sandwiches with contrasting ingredients. Not all roast peppers are the same. Those packed in olive oil are more luscious and expensive. They’re what to buy when you’re going to pair them with burrata or make up an antipasti platter. Others are packed in a mixture of vinegar, salt, sugar or grape must and water, and the piquancy – from the vinegar – is hard to get rid of. Though, when you’re making purées with other strongly flavoured ingredients, that doesn’t matter. It took me a while to get into buying jars of roast peppers. I mean, what’s to stop you roasting a trayful yourself? And then I think about whizzing up an easy sauce, such as romesco – a purée of roast peppers, toasted nuts, garlic and olive oil – and spooning it onto meaty fish, or a bowl of muhammara, the Middle Eastern dip made with blitzed roast peppers and walnuts, and I want them immediately. Jars of peppers aren’t merely for snacking on, they’ll also provide dinner.
Good Food contributing editor Diana Henry is an award-winning food writer. Her latest book is From the Oven to the Table (Mitchell Beazley). For more of Diana’s recipes, go to bbcgoodfoodme.com. @dianahenryfood
58 BBC Good Food Middle East August 2021
