Not Just a Man's World

You’ve probably noticed a theme over the last few weeks.  I noticed that the “vegetables” section of the recipe list was a little short of ideas when put alongside my more favoured areas, like “meat”!  As a result I set out to rectify this by hunting through my recipe books for some vegetable dish inspiration.  When my family came to stay for a weekend I was provided with the perfect opportunity to cook up a plethora of different vegetable dishes to find out what worked and what didn’t.  This is the third of five dishes I tried that weekend.

This dish was gorgeous.  I made it a day in advance to give the flavours time to settle and then served it cold as part of a range of salad dishes.  Alternatively you can serve this warm and it would probably work well piled up beside a hunk of steak or a grilled chicken breast.

The colours are glorious and the flavours and texture are really good too.  A definite favourite which I would be prepared to cook far more often if peppers weren’t so prohibitively expensive in the UK.

Peperonata

Ingredients (serves 4, alongside other salad dishes):
2 red peppers
1 yellow/orange pepper
1 green pepper
100ml (3.5 fl oz) olive oil
1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed
16 pitted black olives
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley (curly or flat-leaf)

Directions:

1. Halve the peppers (between the top and bottom, rather than down their length).  Remove the core and seeds and then slice lengthways (alternatively, halve lengthways, de-seed, slice lengthways and then halve the long sticks afterwards).
2. Heat the oil in a large pan that has a lid, add the garlic and stir-fry over a medium heat for a minute or two until you can smell that the garlic oils have been released into the olive oil.
3. Add the peppers, toss well to coat with the oil and cover the pan with the lid.
4. Reduce the heat to a low setting and leave to cook for 40 minutes stirring once or twice to ensure nothing is sticking or burning.
5. Add the olives and chopped parsley and mix thoroughly.
6. Leave to cool and store in a cool place for 2-3 days (or one day if you’re as disorganised as me) to allow the flavours to strengthen. 
7. If you want to serve it warm, transfer back to a pan just before serving and warm through.  Alternatively serve it at room temperature as part of a salad.

Peperonata

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: fennel and orange salad
2. Paleo recipes: warm goat’s cheese salad
3. Paleo recipes: summer roasted vegetables
4. Paleo recipes: Niçoise salad