Despised and unloved - green peppers

"Without heat - from a grill, an oven a cast-iron pan blackened with age - there is little point to the pepper. " Nigel Slater

"I hate peppers, raw or cooked. Hell to me would be a final meal of roasted peppers." Matt Wilkinson

And when it comes to green peppers, Nigel gets even more vituperative:

"Raw, green and unripe, its waxy plastic skin and lack of obvious juice offer little but crisp nothingness. Refreshing, yes, but somehow an imposter in a green salad; an annoying intruder in a Bloody Mary; an unimaginative addition to a rice dish. Wherever it appears, the raw green pepper seems uncomfortable."

Matt Wilkinson, whose idea of 'hell being a last meal of roasted peppers' , thinks it's because it wasn't in his 'culinary repertoire' when he was growing up, but I think that's nonsense. Think of how many foods that were not in our culinary repertoire when growing up, which are now our favourite foods - hello, pizza, curry, mangos .... The list is endless. Green capsicum - well capsicum generally, but particularly the green ones, are indeed, however, one of those love them or hate them ingredients. Well even just in the hate them category. And yet there they are for sale in quantity so obviously somebody is buying them and using them.

I do confess it took a while for me to really like them, and even now I probably prefer the reds, yellows and oranges. Nevertheless I will buy green ones, particularly if they are cheaper, or just so that I have a variety of colours. A variety of colours is often called for after all - if only for the look.

It was Nigel's outburst in his book Tender Volume 1 however, that started me off on this today. One more yellow poster note removed from it with many still to go.

The major complaint about green peppers seems to be a note of bitterness in the taste.

"No matter how long you roast a green pepper for, there is always a back note of bitterness, so I choose the sweeter red or orange." Nigel Slater

Although why should this be a problem? Bitterness is one of the five tastes and probably the least popular - but then what about coffee and those bitter greens like chicory, radicchio and rocket that foodies rave about? Besides as being slightly bitter, raw green peppers are also crisp and crunchy and ideal to serve with dips or as part of a crudité platter - as one egullet food forum commenter said - that he/she had "never understood what was wrong with a crisp, slightly bitter, juicy fruit."

Mark Diacono of River Cottage, took this a step further by saying:

"Green peppers have a place, particularly in dishes where plenty of salt and spice will balance their flavour."

An opinion shared by Eric Kim in an article in the Pioneer Press publication Twin Cities:

"But, if you’re trying to capture the edge of bitterness, where savory and sweet intermingle, then the green pepper might be your ideal implement. That in-between flavor can be used to your advantage, whether infusing a gin cocktail with a vegetal aroma or lending clarity and balance in flavor bases, like sofrito, epis and the “holy trinity” of onion, pepper and celery in Cajun and Louisiana Creole cooking."

Here is that Cajun, Creole, Louisiana 'holy trinity' - J. Kenji López-Alt of Serious Eats' version of Creole sauce, although it's a sauce that exists in very similar iterations around the Caribbean and into Latin America, with green peppers always playing a major role.

Besides, for a vast variety of dishes in which peppers play a part, they are most often used in conjunction with the other more brightly coloured capsicums and peppers, mostly, admittedly, for the colour contrast, but also perhaps as a flavour contrast.

Nevertheless I wanted to find some recipes where green peppers were the star. So let's start with the really simple - and, to be honest, the longer, smaller and thinner versions of the green pepper - not the bell pepper shape. And here, the star is that Spanish tapas dish Olive oil fried baby green peppers (Pimientos di Padrón) There are numerous recipes - but basically you are just frying them whole in olive oil and sprinkling them with salt. The version shown here is from Rick Stein.

Then a reddit commenter, StalwartGem offered:

"I love the way green peppers brighten cheese. Roast them, pull them from the oven and top with grated parm, crumbled feta, sliced mozzarella, or any shredded cheese, really."

Which does indeed sound good, and simultaneously reminds me that I found an Albanian dish called Speca me maze (peppers in cheese sauce) - Oh My Ovens, which Ottolenghi seems to have adapted for his Creamy green peppers with jalapeño salsa although in his introduction he says that it is 'our take on' Rajas con crema shown here from a website called Isabel Eats.

Which made me wonder whether anyone stuffed them with cheese - and indeed they do. The Greeks and the Bulgarians lay claim to this idea, but it's probably prevalent all around that end of the Mediterranean - this version is from The Modern Nonna.

So obviously green peppers and cheese are a combination that is popular.

Of course, when you start looking for things to do with green peppers/capsicum the vast number of recipes are for stuffing them. And there is a myriad of options out there, but after a while I got so fed up with yet another version that I gave up and ignored the idea. However at the end of all that looking I decided I was being very unfair - well it did seem to be the most popular option - and sausages seemed to be a popular stuffing ingredient.

So I am including a couple of the more different ones here. The first has no recipe because it's from Matt Wilkinson's book Mr. Wilkinson's Vegetables - Baked long green peppers, couscous and currants he calls it. The filling is made from couscous, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, chopped almonds, currants, mint, olive oil, black pepper, haloumi,and parsley. Vaguely Eastern Mediterranean I guess. Once stuffed they are simply baked in the oven. He suggests serving them with a green salad, or maybe even some tomato kasaundi.

Now the problem with most of the last recipes I have talked about is finding long green capsicums - cubanelle, and poblaño seem to be the two types most mentioned - poblaño are hot I think. But I'm not sure that you would find them easily here - maybe the poblaños. Although I have noticed that the supermarkets sometimes sell what they call baby capsicums. I gather they are rather sweeter than the bell peppers we know here as capsicums.

In Italy they have a variety called Friggitelli, which Rachel Roddy uses in a dish she simply calls Friggitelli with tomatoes. They sound rather ideal as a middle way between bitter bell peppers, and hot chillies:

"While classed as sweet to reassure us that the hot gene is recessed, friggitelli peppers are, in fact, not sweet at all. Rather they are the David Byrne of vegetables: intensely savoury with thin, crisp flesh and, while there is no searing heat or spice, they have something ever-so-slightly piquant about them – the so-called trigeminal effect some ingredients cause, which, in this case, is a cooling in your mouth. Friggitelli also don’t suffer the unripe flavour of many green bell peppers, but have a sure, vegetal tone."

The Indians, however, use the more common bell peppers, in a variety of diffferent ways. The one on the left looked quite tempting for a potato freak like me, because it's Bharwa Shimla Mirch (Potato stuffed capsicum in oven)  from a website called Indian Ambrosia. There are a vast number of Indian recipes for green peppers, but I will just include one more - Green peppers with besan flour - mostly because I'm a bit of a coward, and it's from the tried and true Madhur Jaffrey - this time on a website called The Back Yard Lemon Tree.

The Chinese Americans have a stir-fry dish they call Pepper Steak, which seems to mostly feature green capsicum. Eric Kim whose version of Chinese American pepper steak this is, does anyway, although I saw a few more photographs which definitely had red ones. It's an everyday dish.

As is Menemen a Turkish dish with connections to Shakshuka in that it's peppers, tomatoes and eggs. The Turks however, prefer to pour beaten eggs over the tomatoey peppery mixture in the pan. Two versions here - The perfect menemen from Felicity Cloake and Menemen (Turkish scrambled eggs with tomatoes) from The Mediterranean Dish.

J Kenji López-Alt allows that most (English language) home recipes call for a green bell pepper, but, he writes, the best menemens are made “with an entirely different type of green pepper: one that’s thinner, less grassy, with a touch more bitterness and a distinct heat.”  

And finally for the potato freaks amongst you - Patatas a la pobre from Meera Sodha, which could be interesting, but I suspect isn't the best use for green peppers.

They are, of course, really good for you, and I am happy to eat them, but if I'm honest I probably do prefer the red, yellow and orange ones. Roasted and marinaded in garlic, olive oil and herbs they are pretty nice.

Stuffed with cheese maybe ...

YEARS GONE BY

April 11

2024 - A lucky dip, lamb, a website and avgolemono

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Custard

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Pigeons, doves, squabs ...

2018 - Lucky dip - hundreds and thousands

2017 - Nothing