Peperonata is a sauce. Or a kind of relish. Not exactly a condiment, but surely it could be. You could even eat it plain with a piece of toast – or as an appetizer on baguette slices you’ve toasted. It means “stewed sweet peppers,” and that’s exactly what it is. Note the tiny basil and parsley flecks in the sauce.

Last week I promised I’d give you a recipe from my write-up about bell peppers, and some other recipes that were at the forefront of my mind took first place. And, truth be told, I think I liked the scones and tea sandwiches better than I liked this bell pepper dish. Not that it wasn’t good – it was – but it wasn’t great. And yet, some people might think this was terrific. If you’re a lover of bell peppers, you might just think this was the cat’s meow. The taste is gentle – nothing about it pushes the taste envelope – and sometimes that’s a good thing. When you want to have some vegetables, or in my case I wanted a sauce to serve on these stuffed eggplant things, well, this might be the right thing. Last time I served these (they’re a ready-made product from Personal Gourmet) I made a creamy tomato sauce. This time I wanted something altogether different.

The recipe came from the book I told you about when I wrote up the essay about bell peppers, How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons. The recipe is also available online at the Los Angeles Times. He got this recipe from a book called Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia by Patience Gray. Parsons recommended that of the 4 recipes included in the book, his favorite was tuna-stuffed peppers. But they were meant as an appetizer, finger food actually, and it just didn’t appeal to me. I had all the ingredients for the peperonata, so I went with it.

It was quite easy to make – the onions were gently sautéed in olive oil, then you add some chopped tomatoes (not a lot), the roasted and peeled peppers and a roasted jalapeno. A bit of red wine and that cooks a short time and then you add a kind of basil-parsley pesto (pictured at left) – it contains garlic, basil and parsley only. That cooks a really short time and it’s done.

You can eat it hot, room temp or cold. In the finished picture at the top, you can see the flecks of basil or parsley on the peppers. The green mixture kind of muddies the color, I thought, but it’s the flavor that’s important, ya’ know? The color contrast of the peppers with the pesto (above) was so pretty. Then it was gone . . . once I stirred it in.

What’s GOOD: it’s easy. It’s tasty, although not off the charts – at least not my charts. It’s versatile – it could be mixed with pasta too.
What’s NOT: only that it wasn’t a “wow.” But if you like more subtle flavors, have a bunch of bell peppers to use, this mixture works!

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A hearty cake with some polenta and a food-processor-made almond meal. The topping has a lemon syrup poured over and it’s allowed to soak in, then you put on a crème fraiche glaze. Do serve with some whipped cream or ice cream – it needs it.

This recipe came from a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter. It’s a recipe she found at Food & Wine last year. Since I get that magazine, I guess I breezed on by it. The cake is not your typical light-as-a-feather style – this is a more rustic version since it contains not only almond meal (that you make yourself – do not use purchased almond meal) but also polenta or cornmeal.

There are several steps to making this, but it’s not difficult. Hopefully you have a stand mixer, as the sugar and egg mixture needs to mix for about 10 minutes or so – until they attain a ribbony texture. Raw almonds are pulsed to a small mince with the polenta in the food processor. You definitely do NOT want almond meal – that’s too fine – this is a rustic cake with some definite tooth-bite to it. The dry ingredients are added in and the cake is baked in a 10-inch springform pan. While it’s baking you make a lemon sugar syrup – nothing more than a simple syrup with lemon juice in it and it’s poured over the hot cake – while it’s still in the springform pan – that way the sugar syrup will soak down into the cake. Once it’s cooled, you remove the pan and frost with the crème fraiche glaze. (It has lemon juice in it too.) That’s it. Tarla sprinkled candied violets over the top, but that’s purely optional.

What’s GOOD: the different texture – this isn’t a layer cake kind of dessert. Expect some chew to it and it’s not overly moist either. That’s why it needs to be served with something else like whipped cream or ice cream, and definitely some sugared berries or juicy stone fruit. Really delicious flavor, though.Worth making.
What’s NOT: really nothing – it does take some time and effort to make, though. None of the steps are daunting, however.

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The scones we made for the tea – apricot orange on the left, and the favorite, lavender white chocolate chip on the right.

Today you’re going to get 2 recipes – for both scones Sara and I made for her tea recently. They were easy and totally different. The lavender ones used heavy cream as the fat (mostly) and the apricot ones used butter and buttermilk. Both were good, but everyone seemed to favor the lavender white chocolate chip ones over the apricot. Maybe because the texture was slightly different – they were a bit more moist – in fact the batter was really wet when Sara scooped them onto the cookie sheet. It’s hard to tell from the photo but the apricot ones were actually cut in rounds, while the lavender ones were drop scones and they spread some as they baked.

If you happen to have lavender in your garden, do harvest and dry some (providing you don’t use any pesticide on it – you’d not want to be eating that!). If not, you can buy Culinary French Lavender (1 oz) online. Lavender buds don’t keep fresh and vibrant tasting for all that long, so I’d recommend you use whatever you buy within 6 months or so. If you buy any online, unless you use it a lot, I’d buy the smallest quantity available. The one linked above offers free shipping – that’s nice since herbs don’t weigh all that much in small quantities!

The lavender scones came from an article in the San Diego Union Tribune. The recipe is from a bakery in San Diego called Cups. The buttermilk scone recipe came from a very old cook book of Sara’s, a Sunset Breakfast & Brunch cookbook (out of print). She mentioned that it’s her favorite go-to scone recipe and has been for years. I should compare it to my favorite go-to Buttermilk Scones recipe that I’ve been making for about 25 years or so.

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. . .

Apricot Scone printer friendly PDF
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Well. There are tea sandwiches, and then there are THESE tea sandwiches. Oh gosh were they delicious. As I’m writing this – and it’s breakfast time this moment – I’d eat these for breakfast if I had any of them!

Our daughter Sara decided to throw a tea for a group of her girlfriends. Her rule: no children allowed – it was going to be a time for her friends, all busy moms – to sit and relax. Since we were driving there to visit them that evening, she asked if I’d come early. Of course! I’m always up for tea! At home, I made two kinds of cookies to help her – the Baked Cinnamon Toasts I’ve already raved about here and the Moravian Sugar Cookies, although my recipe calls them Almond Spice Wafers. I also made lemon curd, and couldn’t believe it when we got all done and realized we’d forgotten to put it out! Oh, so sad. Sara made the middle cookies you can see below, rich chocolate shortbread kind of cookies pillowed with a chewy caramel layer. Sara made 2 kinds of tea – a rooibos, which is her day to day favorite decaf tea, and a pot of Earl Grey. She also put out some gorgeous spring strawberries, sugar, milk, teacups and saucers, some crème fraiche that I sweetened with a little bit of sugar (this was in lieu of clotted cream), and napkins, of course.

The COOKIES: Baked Cinnamon Toasts are on the left, Sara’s chocolate caramel filled cookies in the middle and the Almond Spice Wafers on the right. Sara thought the Cinnamon  Toasts were the hit of the cookie category. I agree. I had about 5-6 of them I kept at home and within a day they were gone – even my DH, who rarely eats anything sweet – gobbled down 2-3 of them. Guess I’ll have to make them again.

I’ll write up a post in the next day or so with the two scones we made. One an apricot-orange and the star of the show, a lavender white chocolate chip.

The winner of the tea sandwich category at Sara’s tea was this cucumber one. I mean, what would a ladies’ tea be without some cucumber sandwiches? Sara found some tea sandwich suggestions at this website. For this sandwich it said:  Cucumber-Butter – Mix 4 tablespoons softened butter, 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs. Spread on white bread and sandwich with sliced cucumber. Trim the crusts and cut into pieces.   We were making 5 whole sandwiches (which made 4 little quarters each), so we had 20 of each sandwich we made. I added minced chives, lemon zest, some salt and a teaspoon or so of fresh minced thyme leaves. I used 1 cube of butter for the 5 sandwiches and it was just enough.

Over the years, I’ve learned that you need to get just the right proportion of filling to bread.

So in this case, with our first taste test, there wasn’t enough butter. The butter needed salt too. And the cucumber wasn’t quite thick enough. Obviously start with very soft butter, add the flavorings and taste. Cut off the crusts on the bread. We chose not to make round cutouts (too much trouble), so I generously buttered both sides of the bread and placed 4 cucumber rounds on each sandwich. We chose to cut just one slice rather than use many ultra-thin slices as I knew the multiple slices would slip and the sandwich would come apart from the moisture in the cucumbers. So one slice – in our case the cucumber was about 1/8 inch+ thick. The bread used was some very, very soft white sandwich bread we bought here in our local village at a Japanese bakery called Cream Pan. They make the softest and fluffiest white sandwich bread. Kind of like Weber’s bread, but a whole lot more tasty. With the cucumber in place the other bread slice was very carefully positioned, then I gently – oh so gently – cut the sandwich into 4 squares, trying not to cut into any of the cucumbers.

The sandwiches went onto a nice serving tray and Sara covered the platter with a dampened tea towel, which kept them very fresh for the hour prior to the start of the tea. We didn’t refrigerate them – but there wasn’t anything like mayo in anything, so that worked just fine.

The other tea sandwich was just okay. I probably wouldn’t make them again, but it was certainly different. Sara really wanted sandwiches containing some prosciutto, so the website suggestion said: Pea-Prosciutto: puree 1/2 cup thawed frozen peas with 1 tablespoon each olive oil and water in a blender; season with salt and pepper. Spread inside a split loaf of focaccia and fill with prosciutto and shaved parmesan. Cut into squares. 

My suggestion had been to use ham instead of prosciutto, but Sara really wanted the prosciutto, so I bought some imported less-salty prosciutto from our local Italian deli. Sara made the pea puree, which was cinchy easy. I spread the bread with the pea puree, then we took small strips of the prosciutto and layered about 3 ultra-thin slices on each sandwich, added some shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano (very thin). My other suggestion to Sara had been that we chop up the prosciutto instead of laying it in strips (ribbons, really) in the sandwich, but Sara wanted to SEE the prosciutto. Cutting this sandwich was more of a challenge because of the grain of the meat, cut the long way it was easy, but across the prosciutto grain was difficult. For sure use a serrated knife, like a bread knife and use a gentle repetitive sawing motion. Even she agreed later that it would have been easier to eat if we’d chopped it up. Prosciutto has a tendency to be kind of stringy – very do-able if you’re eating a slice out of hand, but not so easy when it pulls apart a dainty tea sandwich! But overall, we were unimpressed with this sandwich. It needed something moist in it – like a thin-thin slice of tomato maybe, or lettuce? And I think I would have added some mayo to the pea puree. I don’t think anybody went back for seconds on this sandwich, but that’s mostly because the cucumber one was SO delicious.

What’s GOOD: well, the herb butter just “made” the sandwich, I think. And the combo of the so very soft thin white bread [it was so perfect for this . . . too bad white bread isn’t all that healthy!] with the crispy cucumber slice, and the lemon zest. It was all just fantastic!
What’s NOT: nothing at all – just know you can’t make this very far in advance – an hour or so. Enlist someone’s help with it so if you’re the hostess you can be doing other things like stirring up scones and boiling water for the tea, setting the table, etc.

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If you’re not all that interested in knowing more about bell peppers, well, I understand. Come back in a couple of days and there will be a recipe up again on the blog. The “food scientist” in me wants more info sometimes, just better knowledge about the food products I buy, even if they’re something I’ve been purchasing for decades.

Prior to about 1980, there was only one kind of bell pepper available – GREEN. Which is why I didn’t like them much. My Dad loved stuffed green peppers (filled with a ground beef and rice mixture and served with tomato sauce). I thought these were vile – I could eat the filling, but the pepper part was bitter, acidic. That stuffed pepper style was very popular during the 1950-70 time frame.

Somewhere around 1960 shoppers were offered a choice of colors -  and bell pepper sales soared. I do remember when they first began appearing in grocery stores – the ones from Holland. But oh, were they ever expensive – way beyond my food budget. In the 30 years after that our per capita consumption of bell peppers quadrupled. According to the USDA, on any given day, about a quarter of Americans were eating some amount of a bell pepper, which is double the amount we’d eat of a French fry. Well, that’s a good thing! The same percentage increase occurred with chile peppers too, although it’s leveled off in the last 20 years. All the credit is due to the Dutch, who figured out how to outsmart nature. You probably already know this – all peppers start out green, and it’s only because they are left on the bush or vine that the colors develop.

Because peppers are a very tender product, they’re very susceptible to bugs and viruses (who knew? viruses? really?). Only very careful farming can produce a fully ripe and colored bell pepper without it developing blemishes and soft spots. Holland’s farmers raise all of theirs in greenhouses, which is why they’re so pristine (and expensive).

Our taste buds really only recognize two tastes in peppers – sweet or hot. Well, I’ll add a 3rd one – bitter, which is what is in green bells – to me, anyway. There are 22 wild varieties of peppers out there and 5 domesticated ones. Most peppers are grown in California and Florida. Chile peppers mostly come from Mexico, where there are at least 3 varieties that grace nearly every Mexican family’s table with regularity. I’m guessing those are: jalapeno, serrano, and poblano. We can find those at our grocery stores every day here in Southern California.

What makes a chile pepper hot is capsaisin (cap-SAY-eh-sun), and if you remember nothing else from this little write-up, the heat in peppers comes MOSTLY from the ribs. Not the seeds. That’s not to say that if you bite into a piece of the green of a jalapeno, you won’t taste heat – you will, but the real heat is in the little whitish/yellowish rib membrane inside the pepper. Remove those and you’ll have a much milder pepper experience. Unless, of course, you WANT the heat, in which case leave it in! Different peppers contain different concentrations of capsaicin (like habanero, the hottest, to the bell pepper which has the least) . And the heat is caused by a recessive gene. That was news to me! What’s interesting is that the heat in chiles can vary not only by variety, but also from peppers on the same bush. Little Japanese shishito peppers (at left) are the most variable – about one in every dozen will be hot enough to blow off the top of your head. Figuratively, of course.

CHOOSING PEPPERS: With the bell peppers, choose the heaviest ones, the ones that are the most filled out and the darkest in color. They’re the sweetest. The recommendation is to choose the peppers that have the boxiest shape with the flattest sides. And obviously, don’t buy one that has a blemish or a soft spot anywhere. Chile peppers should be average size and also unblemished and definitely firm. No soft ones at all.  The best prices on all peppers is in the mid-summer when they are available in abundance.

STORING PEPPERS: They’ll keep best if wrapped well and stored in the refrigerator at about 45°. That’s the temp of most refrigerators. No colder than that, though, or the peppers will start to break down.

Nearly all this information came from Russ Parsons’ book How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table.

Peppers for Cold Meat – my favorite recipe you’ll find here on my blog that showcases bell peppers – it’s a sweet and sour kind of relish that’s just a match made in heaven for almost any kind of meat. It’s easy to make and keeps for weeks and weeks.