easy tapas: piquillo confit

Okay, so, don't even worry about that "confit" in the title. That makes it sound all fancy. Maybe when you serve this, if you're trying to impress people, you trot out the fancy word. But if you're cooking it, it's more like "you take some peppers out of a jar and you cook them a long time without even touching them and something MAGICAL happens."

 
Thank you, Jose Andres.

So the only thing you need to worry about with this recipe is finding the piquillo peppers. Regular sweet red peppers just aren't the same. I usually track down my piquillos at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, and keep a couple jars on hand. And even though I absolutely love to make tapas (mainly because I love to eat them, and because I continue to be profoundly, persistently bad at estimating quantities) I had never turned to this recipe in Jose Andres' "Tapas" cookbook before, simply because I also like to stuff piquillos with goat cheese as a make-ahead appetizer-type tapa, and serving two different preparations of the same pepper didn't really seem like the right way to go.

But now, having made these? I will be making them again every single time the opportunity presents itself.

First, you just lay down a layer of peppers in an ovenproof dish.

 

Then you puree a couple more peppers with some water.

 
Chop up a few cloves of garlic, and spread half the puree over the layer of peppers, and scatter half the garlic over that.

 
Then you repeat: another layer of peppers, another layer of puree and garlic.

Oh, and then you pour olive oil all over it.

 
(The online version of the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of olive oil. You may or may not be okay with using that much. I nipped it back a little, myself. Still tasted awesome.)

Then you bake it at 250 or 300 for an hour and a half. It doesn't look that different when it's done, but it tastes tremendous.

 

Silky and sweet and a little bit smoky from the peppers, and concentrated into a flavor explosion of uberpepperness. Serve it warm from the oven if you like, or at room temperature otherwise, which is how we enjoyed it.

And serve with bread. Lots and lots and lots of bread, to sop up every last bit of the liquid. Seriously, we swiped this right down to the earthenware.

Comments

[supra footwear]

HHH Yes, the design of national policy is important, how our economic development plans for the next five years, how the implementation, how to make our economy even faster. Are designed to advance our focus to invest money in what ways it should be carefully arranged.

[ייעוץ זוגי]

Thanks for sharing this delicious post! I never stop when I see piquillo confit.

[rc helicopter]

Impressive blog! -Arron