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Peppers

Peppers are sweet, sunny, quintessentially Mediterranean vegetables. There are those who can find a use for peppers eaten raw, to give crunch to a salad or for dunking in a dip perhaps, but they make a much more compelling vegetable cooked, when their excess water has been driven off, their flesh has become meltingly soft and yielding, and their sweetness has concentrated and caramelized.

Multicoloured packs of peppers are a distraction. All peppers start off green when unripe, then they ripen and become yellow, orange or red, depending on variety and ripeness. Although green peppers have an honourable place in Middle Eastern cuisine where their slight bitterness is used to good effect, red peppers are otherwise preferable for most cooking purposes because at this stage they are at their ripest, sweetest and most flavourful. That familiar red/yellow/green pepper sprinkle we see on pizza toppings is all about supplying colour, not taste. Choose either green or red peppers, depending on the recipe, and don’t mix them.

Ubiquitous ‘bell’ peppers dominate our shelves. Retailers like these because they have an exceptionally long shelf life and consumers have appreciated them because they can languish in the domestic fridge for weeks without going bad, but they may well be the least exciting variety in pepperdom. The thinner-skinned, more elongated Romano or Ramiro peppers that have been introduced to add a bit of interest to the homogenous pepper category are closer to the genuine Mediterranean article and have a little bit more of the complexity you get in chilli peppers, minus the heat, and small green Padrone peppers have a likeably bitter taste.

As a consequence of how they are grown, the bell peppers that hog our shelves have a high water content that interferes with taste, so you have to work harder to get them to show any of that elusive Mediterranean promise. Rather than refrigerating them, leave them sitting on a windowsill or in a bright place at room temperature until they begin to wrinkle and dry out and darken in colour. Check them every day or two to make sure that they aren’t going bad. They may not look so ornamental, but the longer you mature them in this way, the better their flavour will be when cooked. Red peppers that have been roasted, skinned and then covered in oil deserve a place in any kitchen box of tricks.

Things to do with peppers

• Pulverize roasted red peppers and tomatoes in a blender along with toasted almonds and a little sherry or red wine vinegar and olive oil to make a Spanish romesco sauce to serve as a dip, or with fish or grilled meat.

• Finger-sized green Padrone peppers are great eaten whole when they are stir-fried in olive oil until they char and begin to wilt, then sprinkled with sea salt. A no-fuss but unusual nibble to serve with drinks.

• Brown chicken or rabbit legs in a shallow sauté or frying pan with onions and garlic, then add canned tomatoes, thin slices of roasted red peppers and a pinch of paprika and simmer, without a lid, until the meat is tender, in the style of French poulet Basquaise.

• Fleshy, syrupy roasted peppers and soft goat’s cheese make a succulent lunchtime sandwich.

• Anoint roasted red peppers with olive oil and chopped preserved lemons, green herbs and toasted pine kernels.

• A trickle of Middle Eastern pomegranate molasses gives roasted peppers a sour-sweet edge that enlivens grilled or fried fish.

Are peppers good for me?

Peppers are a brilliant source of the antioxidant vitamins C and beta-carotene which may help neutralize the damage done by harmful free radicals that can predispose the body to disease. Red peppers contain higher levels than green or yellow peppers. Red peppers also contain lycopene, a plant pigment that some research suggests may inhibit certain cancers, and two pigments, lutein and zeaxanthin, that some research suggests are active against macular degeneration, the main cause of blindness in the elderly.

Peppers have a bad track record when it comes to pesticide residues. Government tests regularly find peppers with multiple residues. Occasionally, traces of pesticides not approved in Europe have been found. Pesticide residues in peppers regularly trigger Europe-wide Rapid Alerts to warn regulatory authorities, retailers and wholesalers. This is one vegetable where it is well worth considering buying organic. Pesticides are all but outlawed in organic production and in recent years residues have not been found in organic peppers.

How are peppers grown?

In hot, sunny countries, peppers grow happily outdoors. In Britain, they can also flourish outside, if cultivated in a sunny, sheltered spot in areas with a mild climate. But unless you have a garden, allotment, or market garden source – and even then these are likely to have been brought on in a greenhouse before being planted out – any peppers you buy will have been cultivated using hydroponic techniques in a state-of-the-art glasshouse. Cucumbers, aubergines and some salad leaves are also cultivated using the same techniques.

Glasshouse production is about as far away from any notion of ‘natural’ growing as it is possible to get. Production is not pegged to the seasons but can start at any point in the year as the glasshouse creates an artificial climate-controlled environment that can be heated in winter or cooled in summer. Computerized sensors monitor temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and light, automatically adjusting levels in response to variations in both external and internal climate.

The essence of hydroponic systems is that plants grow not in earth, but in an alternative growing medium – gravel, coconut fibre, clay pebbles, granular rockwool (like fibreglass), perlite (volcanic glass granules), vermiculite (a mineral), even air – and are fed nutrients in a liquid solution. There are various hydroponic techniques. The nutrient solution can be sucked up into the growing medium using a wick, dripped on to the base of each plant, pumped to the roots, or misted directly on to the roots. The same nutrient solution can be used throughout the plant’s growing cycle, but by varying the formula to support different stages of growth – root, leaf, flower – the plants can be encouraged to provide a heavier crop. For more information on the pros and cons of this type of production see TOMATOES/How are tomatoes grown?

Are peppers a green choice?

It’s hard to think of any vegetable that is quite so monotonously standardized and so devoid of interesting variations and biodiversity as the bell pepper. This dull, techno-pepper plant can be made to grow resolutely and produce heaps of watery fruits in its glasshouse world, come wind come shine, so it rules the roost. Supermarket cosmetic specifications compound the insult. Thanks to them, our larger-than-life peppers might as well be cloned as they share identikit proportions and gleam like fake plastic vegetables.

The whole pepper category is ripe for innovation. The pity is that there are many more interesting sweet pepper varieties that could be cultivated and which are still widely grown in southern and eastern Europe and the Middle East. Seeds for a more biodiverse, and genuinely varied, range of peppers are available for home-growing. If you have access to peppers from a domestic greenhouse, allotment or garden, then you may get a flavour of them.

Glasshouse cultivation raises a number of environmental issues (see TOMATOES/Are tomatoes a green choice?).

Where and when should I buy peppers?

Imported peppers, usually Dutch or Spanish, are available all year round. English peppers come on to the market from March until October.

AN APOLOGY FOR A PEPPER?

Peppers were an alien vegetable (or more correctly, fruit) until the 1960s and 1970s when they earned the patronage of distinguished cookery writers such as Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, who testified to how delightful they could be when consumed on their home turf. By the 1980s, our sweet pepper market had been more or less sewn up by the Dutch horticultural industry, which kept us supplied with a never-ending supply of the glasshouse-grown sort. Neither Spanish nor English-grown pepper growers have ever really challenged its supremacy. Britain’s meek acceptance of what southern countries might see as an apology for a pepper may have something to do with the fact that our experience of eating the sun-grown, hot-country sort was limited to foreign holidays, so we were less aware of how different, and how much more rewarding such peppers might be.

The sheer dogged reliability of unseasonal hothouse peppers has won them a near invincible place in our vegetable repertoire. At any point in time, while wholesale markets and suppliers will have fluctuating stocks of other vegetables, they will always be able to supply peppers. ‘Mediterranean vegetables’, showcasing the pepper, have become a menu cliché. Ratatouille, roasted peppers and red pepper soup have become thoroughly embedded in Britain’s vegetable lexicon.

Will peppers break the bank?

Peppers are a commodity glasshouse crop, but this doesn’t stop supermarkets charging unjustifiably high prices for them. As a general rule, peppers are cheaper in greengrocers and from market stalls. Don’t be put off by peppers that look a little soft and wrinkled, instead snap them up at bargain prices. They will taste better than their smooth, still waterlogged, more expensive equivalent. Don’t turn up your nose at discounted peppers that are soft or rotten in parts. Peppers are one vegetable where you can happily cut out the bad bit without any off flavours tainting the rest.