recipe: roasted red pepper and almond dip (salsa cremosa di peperoni rossi arrosto e mandorle)

March 12, 2014 | Simona

Roasted red pepper and almond dip

by Simona Carini

Prep Time: 45 minutes total

Cook Time: 1 hour total

Keywords: blender bake roast appetizer sugar-free vegetarian vegan almond red pepper

Ingredients (1 1/2 cup)

1/2 cup whole almonds, blanched, peeled and toasted in the oven for 12 minutes at 350 F
[Note: I measure the almonds after I toast them; the weight is 75 g]
1 cup drained oven-roasted Round of Hungary peppers or red bell peppers (see Note below)
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
A generous pinch of dried grated orange zest
3 garlic cloves, roasted with the skin on and then peeled (see Note below)
1 tablespoon fresh bread crumbs (made from my homemade bread)
1 teaspoon olive oil
Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions

Note: Given their shape, I roast this kind of peppers whole, at 375 F. After 25 minutes or so, I turn them stem-side down and complete the roasting. When done, I put them in a paper bag to steam and then peel them and remove the seeds. I wrap the garlic cloves in a piece of foil and roast them with the peppers, taking them out when I turn the peppers. When cooled, I peel the cloves. If using red bell peppers, place them on their side and turn them 90 degrees every 15 minutes until done, then proceed as above.

Finely chop the almonds in a food processor. Add roasted peppers, bread crumbs, orange zest, vinegar, lemon juice and garlic and process to a coarse purée.

With the machine running, pour the olive oil through the feed tube and process a little longer.

Season the dip with sea salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a small bowl.

Cover and refrigerate. Bring the dip to room temperature before serving.

If you don’t need the whole batch, spoon half in a one-cup container. Cover the surface with a small piece of wax paper, put the lid and freeze. Thaw before serving.

Go to the full post on salsa cremosa di peperoni rossi arrosto e mandorle / roasted red pepper and almond dip

involtini di peperoni / pepper roll-ups

October 3, 2010 | Simona

(one of an infinite number of possible variations)

Summer lingers at our farmers' market in the shape of tomatoes and peppers, while fall makes itself known in the shape of winter squashes. In a recent post, I described my use of Round of Hungary peppers. In an older post, I described that of bell peppers.

Yesterday morning, I purchased four peppers called Italian long from a farmer that grows a wide range of pepper varieties. I tried his Italian peppers for the first time last year, as a result of a recommendation from my friend Christine of Christine Cooks, and I became instantly a fan. On this page, you will find some details about these peppers.

I must admit that I am not adventurous in the pepper area, so I tend to stay within the sweet camp. One thing that has always amazed me about peppers is that you can't tell whether they are sweet or hot, and if so, how hot, by their shape or color.

Preparing sweet peppers for me means oven-roasting them, and yesterday, after roasting the beauties you see in the photo (there was also another one), I decided to use them in a recipe I created some time ago, which uses bell peppers. First, I will give the original recipe, then will add some comments on my most recent realization of it. This can be called the recipe of 2's.

Ingredients:

2 bell peppers, quartered, cored and seeded
2 tablespoons small capers (capperi), rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons pecans, lightly roasted in a dry skillet and finely chopped (about 8 halves)
2 tablespoons raisins (uvetta), soaked in warm water for 15 minutes, drained and chopped
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley (prezzemolo)
2 tablespoons crumbled crumb (i.e., the soft part of bread)
2 teaspoons olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 375 F. Line a baking pan with foil and place the bell pepper quarters in it, skin side up. Roast them for 30 minutes or so. Place the roasted peppers inside a paper bag and put the bag on a plate. When cool, remove the skin from the pepper strips and spread them on a plate, skin side down. In the meantime, put all the ingredients for the filling into a small bowl, add the olive oil, salt and pepper and mix well. Place a tablespoon of filling at one end of each bell pepper strip and make a roll. Place all the rolls in an oiled frying pan and warm up on low until heated through. Serve immediately.

The photo above shows a realization of the original recipe. The first departures from it was that I roasted the 4 Italian peppers whole, so the roasting phase took longer than 30 minutes. When ready, I placed the peppers in a plastic container, put the lid on, and let them cool. It was then very easy to remove the seeds (pulling the stem extracts the inner membrane and most of the seeds) and the skin. Given the shape of the peppers, from each one I obtained two strips wide enough for the involtini. (In two cases I also obtained a narrower strip that I set aside for another use, which I will describe in a future post.) Another, small, departure was the use of toasted walnuts instead of pecans.

By then, it was clear to me that, Italian peppers being thinner than bell peppers, the rolling up would require a more delicate hand. Given their length, though — and the specimens I bought were large representative of the variety — each involtino still was thick enough to hold the filling (ripieno), as you can see in the photo above. By the way, the word involtino comes from involto (bundle): literally, it means small bundle.

The final departure from the original recipe was the placing of a thin slice of my homemade Wensleydale cheese on the top of two of the involtini, as shown in the photo. The result is an interesting variation. The head of my Quality Assurance department (a.k.a., my husband) liked the involtini and would not declare a preference between the variation with cheese and the one without it, opting for a non-committal "They are different," which I have learned to interpret as meaning "I'll eat either of them any time."

This is my contribution to edition #253 of Weekend Herb Blogging, an event started by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, now organized by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and hosted this week by me, Simona of briciole.

This post contains the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

involtini di peperoni

or launch the involtini di peperoni audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

cartolina da San Gemini: insalata tricolore / postcard from San Gemini: tricolor salad

October 28, 2008 | Simona

One day we drove to San Gemini to visit an art gallery. By the time we arrived, the gallery had closed, so we walked around the town, fairly deserted around 1:30 pm, with stores closed and people having lunch. I like to listen to our steps echo along narrow streets, and to turn tight corners wondering what lies in wait around them.

A sign declares San Gemini’s membership to the Cittaslow network. The top portion says: Benvenuti a San Gemini Città Slow (Welcome to San Gemini Slow City). At the end of our walk, my husband drank un caffè, while I sipped my daily cappuccino, then we drove to our next destination.

I came back from Italy with a desire to spend some quality time in my kitchen. First there was the shopping for groceries at the Berkeley Bowl, then the planning of what to make. For both fagiolini (snap beans) and peperoni (bell peppers) we are approaching the end of the season, so I felt I needed to take advantage of their presence on the shelves. By adding some lovely cipolline (pearl onions) to red peppers and green beans, I obtained a white, red and green salad, the colors of the Italian flag (bianco, rosso e verde). The red bell peppers were complemented by some red cipolline. Since the ingredients of the salad are cooked separately in different ways and then brought together, this can be thought of as a “slow” salad.

As I have written here, I like my fagiolini boiled until they are pretty soft, and as I have detailed here, I like my peperoni roasted. I dropped the cipolline in boiling water and left them there for a couple of minutes, then drained them and let them cool briefly before slipping off their skin. I sprayed a small frying pan with olive oil and sautéd the cipolline for a few minutes. This is something I had never done before and I liked both the process and its result.

Finally, I put in the same bowl the fagiolini, the peperoni, chopped, and the cipolline, cut in half. I seasoned the vegetables with the usual, though never boring, olive oil and balsamic vinegar combination, plus some salt and freshly-ground black pepper, all to taste. The quantities used were: a pound of fagiolini, two small peperoni and half a pound of cipolline. The symphony of textures was soft (fagiolini), crunchy (cipolline) soft (peperoni). The result was simple and satisfying, a lingering link to a summer fast fading away.

This is my entry for the October edition of the lovely event My Legume Love Affair – Fourth Helping, brainchild of Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook and hosted this month by Sra of When My Soup Came Alive.

Here is the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

cartolina da San Gemini: insalata tricolore

or launch the cartolina da San Gemini: insalata tricolore audio file [mp3].