Tony's Mom's Food 101: Roasted Red Peppers

So according to my tag line, I'm an Italian Boy. This is both by heritage (100%, by the way) and by the old adage "You are what you eat." I grew up eating Italian, because that's what my mom knew how to make, because that's what her mom knew how to make, ad infinitum. I was also fortunate enough to have a grandfather who, in his retirement, kept a huge vegetable garden. Every spring, summer and fall were filled with fresh produce grown only one town over from my home. Locavores, eat your hearts out. Therefore, I am a product of my parents and so is my minor obsession with food, as well as my innate ability to cook American-Italian food (Figure 12.p).

Fresh produce only lasts so long, though. What did we do with bushels of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and squash? A good deal of it was given away, especially towards the end of each season. The tomatoes were stewed and canned in the traditional style, and then made in to red gravy (what people of non-Italian descent would refer to as red sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, marinara, or pizza sauce). My mom's red gravy is a jealously guarded secret, which of course will never be published on this website. What I will write about is what we used to do with the red peppers: roast them (and subsequently freeze them - more on that later). She has actually shared this recipe publicly a couple of times, once given to me to give to a college friend who was compiling a dorm hall based cook book, and once to my parents' local paper, a picture of my mom holding the finished product included. Needless to say, I won't be "off-ed" or "whacked" or any other stereotypical Italo-American slang term for "assassinated" for sharing this recipe - I'm just sharing it with more people than before.

Figure 12.p - My parents. Me taking a picture of them taking pictures of each other = meta-irony. Not really.

I know what you're thinking, you can just buy roasted red peppers in a jar in the grocery store. I tried that once, and I almost threw the jar out because they tasted like crap compared to the peppers I'm used to. Comparing these home made roasted reds to the grocery store jars is like saying you're going to serve Spam with cloves in it on Christmas. It would work if the people you were serving it to had only ever eaten Spam and had no clue what a real roasted and glazed ham tastes like. Spam and roasted red peppers from the jar are a proverbial slap in the face to people who know what the real thing is like. So, without further hesitation, here is my mom's recipe for home made roasted red peppers.

Roasted Red Peppers

• 8 red bell peppers - preferably grown by your own grandfather like mine are, but that's not mandatory.
• 1/3 cup of water.
• olive oil - you're using it raw here, so haul out the good stuff. Extra-virgin only. Cold-pressed highly suggested, unfiltered preferred.
• one clove of garlic, minced.

Wash your peppers, cut them in half length-wise, remove the green core and every single seed. Place them in a roasting pan or a deeper-sided cookie sheet face down in a single layer, coat the bottom of the pan with the water. Move your oven rack to the second-from-the-top position and set the oven to broil. Broil for about 20 minutes, until the skins are totally black. Remove the peppers from the pan and place them in a large mixing bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a clean dish towel. This will make them steam (since they're still hot) and will cause the burnt, black skin to peel away from the lightly caramelized flesh. Let them do this for one hour. Peel the skins off and throw them away. Cut your newly skinned peppers lengthwise into long strips.

At this point, you have one of two options. Either dress them with olive oil and garlic, place them in the fridge and allow the flavors to marinate for a while, or freeze them and bring containers to your adult son who is too lazy to do this whole process himself as often as you do. They freeze and thaw just fine (Figure 12.q) . Either you or your adult son can use them however you would presumably have used the awful ones from the jar - in antipastos, on pizzas, or tossed with pasta. The best way to eat them is on a sandwich made with crusty Italian bread and a slice of Provolone cheese.

Figure 12.q - Un-dressed roasted peppers in their natural habitat. This specimen is post-thaw.

Until next week!