There's nothing like an interesting recipe to get a home chef's creative juices going. That what it was today when I happened upon Francis Lam's recipe using red peppers. It was inspired by his two year old's love and constant demand of red peppers. Unfortunately the kid sometimes gets tired of them, leaving a fridge of bright red spears quickly aging. Mr. Lam who also is the host of The Splendid Host. on American Public Media looked to Justin Smillies cookbook, "Slow Fires" a book he edited. It is a kind of a red pepper jelly, made flavorful with onions and thyme and garlic -lots and lots of garlic.
Of course I put my own spin on it. I used four colors of peppers and two huge onions.
The onions were minced in my mini-chopper and I also added chopped tomatoes for more of a ratatouille vibe.
About four cups of chopped onions were added to a quarter of a cup of olive oil. The amount of oil was just not enough. I increased it to one half cup which worked very well.
The peppers were cut into sticks as per Mr. Lam's recipe.
The onions were cooked down first with the tomatoess and garlic in the olive oil. As per directions four large pinches of sea salt were added to sweat out the juices. Thyme was in the original recipe but I felt oregano was more suitable and flavorful.
Mr. Lam used old peppers however I used fresh ones that took about twenty minutes to cook down.
The end result was tasty. Mr. Lam served his over toasted slices of artisanal bread with a large dollop of ricotta slathered on each. I'm not a big ricotta person and soft bread wouldn't work . I used Italian bread cut into four cubes. The peppers were poured over them in a large bowl.
The bread perfectly sopped up the juices and it proved to be very delicious.A plus is that there was so much left over I'll create a second meal with flavored rice for it.
I plan on making this again with definitely less onions and definitely more peppers. I do want to keep in the tomato.It added more flavor and color.
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