Nicole Is Cooking

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(Post 1 in the series, Beets a la Fantôme Chocolat, is available here.)

Fantôme Chocolat and I came back from vacation with an overwhelming amount of peppers thanks to the girls. Other than using some for salsa, we weren’t sure what to do with the rest. Luckily, The Joy of Pickling had no shortage of recipes.

We made Salsa Verde first (which you will see later in the tomatillo post) which required roasted peppers and Fantôme Chocolat’s love of roasting peppers over the open flame of my gas range was born. Neither of us are overly thrilled with roasted peppers packed in oil and to our joy, Joy had a pickled roasted pepper recipe that we decided to try.

Peppers on the open flame.

A nicely roasted jalapeño.

Roasted peppers cooling.

Roasted peppers, skins removed.

As demonstrated by Fantôme Chocolat’s technique in the previous photos, when roasting peppers you want to completely char them on the outside. Once they cool, the skin will be removed when you scrape off the charred parts. I have read that you can also roast them in the oven, but then you would miss out on the fun of interacting with an open flame and having charred pepper skin flakes flying around your kitchen.

After using what we needed for salsa verde, Fantôme Chocolat roasted enough peppers for 2 half pints of “Pickled Roasted Peppers” before the novelty of the open flame and flying skin wore off. The pickling liquid used white wine vinegar, sugar (which we may have omitted, intentionally), and pickling salt. Garlic was added to the jars.

Pickled Roasted Peppers

For the sweet peppers, we settled on the recipes for “Pickled Sweet Green Pepper Strips” (described as a great addition to salads or with dips like hummus… we used a variety of colors) and “Marinated Sweet Peppers” (the liquid is also supposed to be a good salad dressing when you use the peppers). Fantôme Chocolat sliced while I prepared pickling liquids and the items that were to join the peppers in the jars. When I finished, I made the silly mistake of beginning to pack the peppers in the jars. I didn’t get the right color balance so I had to pull everything out of the jars so Fantôme Chocolat could repack them with proper attention to color balance (that’s what I get for allowing an artist in my kitchen).

The liquid for the sweet pepper strips uses white wine vinegar, water, and sugar (which we decreased). Garlic, ginger and pickling salt were added directly to the jars. We made 4 pints.

Pickled Sweet Pepper Strips

The marinated sweet peppers were supposed to be blanched and I completely forgot to do this. We decided to go ahead with them anyway. Garlic and fresh herbs are packed in the jars (we used oregano since that is what I had fresh). The liquid is made with white wine vinegar and pickling salt. Olive oil is added to the top of the jars. We made 2 pints.

Marinated Sweet Peppers

Last, but not least, were the hot peppers. Fantôme Chocolat and his sister both have a taste for things very hot so these became 4 half pint jars of “Pickled Whole Hot Peppers”. I ended up doing this one alone, but was nice and paid attention to the color balance in the jars. In this recipe, the peppers are slit along their length with their ends left attached. Garlic, allspice, peppercorns and some bay leaf is added in the jar with the peppers. The liquid is made from pickling salt, vinegar and water (I believe I used a combination of cider and white wine vinegar).

Pickled Whole Hot Peppers

All of the peppers were processed in a hot water bath after they were packed. And that concludes the pickling of the peppers!

Pickled Pepper Totals (in pints)
Pickled Roasted Peppers: 1 pint
Pickled Sweet Pepper Strips: 4 pints
Marinated Sweet Peppers: 2 pints
Pickled Whole Hot Peppers: 2 pints
Total: 9 pints