pepper glut

[tracie]

Hi,

can anybody suggest a few things to do with peppers, I have loads of the long pointy red ones and | am at a loss as to what to do with so many.

Thanks

Tracie[color=#FF0040][/color]

[peter]

Oh no, no, no, no ....................

[Westi]

Hi Tracie

Hope someone answers as I have loads also. I'm really chuffed
as so many have gone red this year, usually only get one or two
and then stuck with green at the end of the season. I have
normal chubby ones and both long & short pointy ones.

Westi

[Tony Hague]

Well, as nobody has yet suggested anything ...

If you also happen to have a tomato surplus, you could make/freeze a pasta sauce.

Other recipes that use a lot of peppers that spring to mind are "bavarois au poivron", it usually uses 3 large red peppers, or Madhur Jaffery's Indian chicken in a sweet pepper sauce - from the BBC series book (I remember the programme, which makes me feel old). A bit of Googling should get a recipe for either, though it may help if you can read French !

[Colin_M]

If you like roasted peppers, I'd have thought it should be easy to do 10-15 at a time in the oven and each batch would take roughly 20-30 mins.

Not too much preparation needed (just make sure there's only a short stub of stem) then lay them out on a tray to roast - no oil needed. Once finished, some people recommend putting them into a plastic bag to sweat (maybe you'd need a few carrier bags for these quantities).

This stage can then make it easier to remove the skin. You may find you can live with the skin (or can't be bothered to remove it). If you can, it helps to keep the liquid inside as it adds to the taste.

After that, you could freeze in smallish batches, or preserve in jars.

[Elaine]

Hi Westi. Regarding the green peppers. If you have an empty drawer in your kitchen (I emptied the "glory hole" drawer of all sorts of kelt ) put your green peppers in there with a couple of over ripe bananas. I was rather sceptical but it really works. It worked well on tomatoes which were just starting to colour up but not on the green ones.

The bananas give off a gas which helps them to ripen, though I can't remember what gas it is...begins with E I think.
Cheers.

[Westi]

Cheers Elaine - Never thought of putting the banana in with peppers
although I do it with my tomatoes.
I found a recipe for Peperonata which says not suitable to freeze but
I think it might if you omit the vinegar and the huge hunk of olive oil
adding these when re-heating - what do others think?

2 red capsican
2 green capsican
250 ml Olive Oil (a bit much I would think)
2 red onions in long strips
6 garlic gloves finely sliced
1 tab tom paste
2 large ripe toms
1 tea of sugar
2 tab or white or red wine vinegar
handful parsley and basil leave

Blister skin on capsican, put in bag & sweat. Peel & cut into strips.
1 tab of oil and fry onion & garlic until softened.
Add chilli, tom paste, toms sugar & vinegar and cook 1 minute.
Add capsican, herbs, pinch salt & rest of oil & cook 10 mins.
(AWW July 2009)

It looks really colourful and tempting, I like the sweet / sour element.

Westi

[G.Fruit]

You can freeze peppers, my mother used to always do it, and with chillis too. Bananas give off a gas called ethylene, infact all fruits give off the gas - but bananas give off more. If you have any fruit growing in your garden (I used to have mangos and avacados) you should pick them before they´re ripe, and ripen them in a paper bag with a banana as the gases begin the ripening process.

[Primrose]

The long thin "pointy" think skinned peppers freeze excellently. I also had a glut last year and just cut them into small strips and open froze them for 30 minutes until they were hard. Then I just piled them into those plastic zip lock freezer bags. They stay separate and you can just pull out a handful when you need them.