Roasted Pepper Salad with Garlic

Name: Roasted Pepper Salad with Garlic
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 3 green kapia peppers; 2 red kapia peppers; 1 hot green pepper (optional); 3 small tomatoes (about 400g); 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano; 1/2 teaspoon sugar; 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin; 2 cloves garlic; 3 tablespoons olive oil; salt, black pepper

July 30, 2018

Vegetables Salads Sauces and Salsa

Recipe: Roasted Pepper Salad with Garlic

Super fresh, this salad. The cumin brings a welcome note of freshness. I ate it all weekend as a condiment alongside fried eggs and grilled meat, but also with tuna. Basically the salad is inspired by the famous Tunisian Mechouia salad, I just made small modifications in how I prepared the tomatoes. I preferred to cook a sauce from them instead of grilling them. That's because with them on the grill, it always seemed to me that the salad came out too "watery". No matter how long I let them drain, they still release liquid into the salad and their taste doesn't seem as concentrated either, it gets lost next to the peppers. If you make it this way, let me know what you think.

Ingredients

3 green kapia peppers
2 red kapia peppers
1 hot green pepper (optional)
3 small tomatoes (about 400g)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt, black pepper

How to prepare roasted pepper salad with garlic

Roast the peppers on a grill or in the oven and peel them following the instructions here. Put them in a food processor along with all the juice they released when peeling and pulse just a few times, just to chop them a bit, don't make them into a paste. Alternatively, you can finely chop the peppers with a knife.
In a wider pot/pan (about 25cm diameter), put 1 tablespoon of oil, the grated tomatoes (cut in half and grate them with the cut side until you're left with the skin in your hand), oregano, and sugar. Add a little salt too. Cook the tomatoes over medium heat until they reduce well and the water evaporates. When they look like a sauce, stop - it takes about 15-20 minutes. Toward the end you can lower the heat so they don't burn.
In a small pan, heat 2 tablespoons of oil and add the crushed garlic and cumin. Stir briefly until you smell a pleasant aroma from the pan, then remove the pan from heat.
Pour the flavored oil from step 3 over the tomato sauce, stir just until it bubbles once. Add the chopped peppers and stir again until it bubbles once. Remove the pot from heat and taste the salad for salt and cumin (note: cumin, especially ground cumin, loses its aroma quickly; if it's older you may need more; my cumin was freshly ground). Grind some black pepper.
* if you want a spicy salad you can add a roasted hot pepper or a little harissa paste.
Let it cool. It's good with canned tuna, with eggs (fried, boiled), as a condiment next to grilled meat, on baguette slices.