Peperonata

Once upon a time before I was married I travelled to France and had my first culinary experience with Ratatouille. I loved it, it was a perfect lunch served at room temperature in the heat of Nice, but I had no idea then that I would be making it for the rest of my life! That is because the same dish in Italy is known as Peperonata, and it was a mainstay of Adriana's kitchen, particularly as the summer morphed into fall and the vegetables became overly plentiful. Put another way, what do you do with all those zucchini? We have always grown our own vegetables, although eggplant proves very difficult (read impossible) to produce in this distinctly non-mediteranean climate. I do make this dish all year round, though, and if I don't have the ingredients in the garden, I purchase them. This is a vegetarian stew, easy to make and delicious served hot or at room temperature, as a main or as a side.
Goes well with fish or chicken, summer grills or winter dishes.
Peperonata
Assemble the vegetables. Adriana used whatever she had, as follows:
Peppers, any colour or mixed. (Hence the name--Peperonata.)
Onions, 1 or 2 big ones.
Zucchini (unpeeled).
Eggplant (unpeeled).
Tomatoes, 3 or 4 (or 1 large tin Italian peeled Plum tomatoes with juice.)
Get a good handful of Basil, some Parsley, and a few cloves of garlic.
Now stop and admire the beauty of these--the eggplant with their shiny purple skins, the green zucchini, the orange-red tomatoes. Gorgeous! Maybe you should paint them instead of cooking them. Oh, sorry. Just an aside.
Get out a good-sized heavy pot with a lid.
Chop up all the vegetables, not too small, maybe about 2 in. chunks.
Put a drizzle of oil in the bottom of the pot and add the vegetables, the raw ones first,including chopped garlic, as much as you like. Cook and stir a bit and add the canned tomatoes if using. (You might have enough ripe fresh tomatoes.) Add some chopped Basil,and parsley if you like.
Cook and stir until the veggies are soft, and salt to taste.
Adriana cooked this in a cast-iron pot on a wood stove which I swear imparts a special flavour I have never been able to replicate. She would cook the Peperonata until the vegetables were pretty much indistinguishable.
I cook it a bit less than that, and you should take it off the heat when it looks and tastes the way you want it to.
Serve it hot or at room temperature. Adriana always topped it with a good handful of grated Montasio (or Parmigiano), which looks and tastes wonderful and may be the only thing distinguishing this from Ratatouille.
Garnish the serving dish with more Basil.
This is great taken for a picnic, too. Travels well.

About Red Peppers

Red Peppers are about as beautiful as anything in nature, I think, and are delicious and nutritious as well. I'm sure you use them raw in salads or toss them into stir-fries. Of course they grew in abundance in Adriana's kitchen garden, along with green and yellow, but here on the west coast of Canada I have to buy them. But red peppers are plentiful in the stores in the Fall and the price is reasonable, so for many years now we purchase one or two cases so that we can roast them in bulk and then freeze them for use during the winter months. How often have you come across a recipe that sounds great but calls for one or two roasted red peppers, and having attempted to roast peppers in the past and scorched your fingers, have abandoned the idea? Despair no more. Here's what you can do so that you always have a supply at hand.

Roasted Red Peppers
First, purchase a case or two of red peppers, and wash them.
Now put on a jacket (if you're in Canada in the Fall) and start the barbeque.
Pour a glass of Prosecco (or whichever wine you like) and find a pair of tongs.
Get out your biggest soup pot with a tight-fitting lid and put it nearby.
Cover the surface of the grill (when its good and hot) with a single layer of red peppers.
Sit in a lawnchair close to the wine, tongs in hand, and turn the peppers until they're blackened on all sides.
As each one blackens put it into the soup pot and put the lid back on. Keep adding peppers to the grill until you've done them all.
Put the pot on the kitchen counter to be dealt with the next day. (Put it in the frig if you live in a hot climate.)
By the time you're ready to deal with them, the hot peppers will have steamed in the pot, finishing the cooking process, and the skins will have started to lift off while the syrupy pepper juice will have collected in the bottom of the pot. They'll be nice and cool and easy to handle.
Peel the peppers, putting them into a bowl and discarding the peels and the seeds and membranes that you scrape out. Do not discard the juice!

Using zip-lock freezer bags, portion out the peppers in the amount you think will be the handiest. Then portion out the juice, pouring some into each bag of peppers.
Seal and freeze.
These are absolutely delicious and require very little time to defrost in a bowl on the kitchen counter when you need them.