some­thing new to do with a pepper

Because I do get bored with peppers.

Avery can eat them — red, orange or yel­low, but we both agree that green is loath­some — till they come out her ears. It’s her default set­ting for any side dish, to go with any main dish. She likes them cooked down in olive oil with plenty of Mal­don sea salt, till they’re slightly caramelly and have prob­a­bly left all their nutri­tional value behind in the sludgy oil on the bot­tom of the skillet.

So yes­ter­day I was slouch­ing around my beloved Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket, killing the time it would take my mas­terly fish­mon­ger to fil­let two sea bream for me, when I came upon a cer­tain veg stand sport­ing red pep­pers. But not your ordi­nary kind that are the size of a half-pint of cream. These were tennis-ball shaped things and very round, with flat bot­toms. “You look like you want to be stuffed with some­thing,” I said, actu­ally out loud, thereby scar­ing the poor veg guy to death, I’m sure.

It was but the work of a moment to bring them home and scoop out their seeds and stringy lit­tle mem­branes and sit them in a foil-lined glass dish, where­upon they became:

Red Pep­pers Stuffed with Mush­rooms and Boursin
(one pep­per per per­son, serves four)

4 lit­tle round red pep­pers
1 tbsp but­ter
2 large flat mush­rooms, or 2 hand­fuls small mush­rooms, chopped rather fine
1 clove gar­lic, minced
1 pack­age Boursin (an easy-to-find soft French cheese), with gar­lic and herbs
olive oil to drizzle

Line up your pep­pers and make sure they can sit with­out falling over. Saute the mush­rooms and gar­lic in the but­ter till soft, then spoon in equal mea­sures into each pep­per. Stuff in as much Boursin as you can fit (it will obvi­ously depend on the size of the pep­pers). Driz­zle olive oil over as much of the sides of the pep­pers as you can reach. Do not add salt: the Boursin is salty enough even for me.

Place the dish in a hot over (around 400F, 200C) and roast the pep­pers for about ten min­utes, then take them out and spoon the accu­mu­lat­ing oil and juices over the pep­pers and return them to the oven for per­haps ten more min­utes, or until the pep­pers have begun to look black­ened and shriv­elly around their cut tops. Divine.

**************

Avery ate the entirety of her pep­per, devour­ing every last scrap of mush­room and cheese, before she even began on the sea bream and mash. I was so pleased! Admit­tedly the sea bream was blame­less but a bit dull: super fresh, but I didn’t do any­thing very inter­est­ing with it, just brushed the skin with olive oil and stuck it under the grill, and any­way, we take the skin off, so why bother with the olive oil? Sheer habit. I was pay­ing so much atten­tion to my lit­tle pep­per friends that I neglected my lovely fish. Ah well, next time I’ll be all com­pla­cent about my pep­pers and I can do some­thing cre­ative with the bream. But one dis­cov­ery per day is quite enough for me.

I’ve been writ­ing up a storm, here at my soli­tary desk, bro­ken up only by my weekly ten­nis game and instal­la­tion of what­ever bizarre activ­ity is occu­py­ing Rocco the Mad Ten­nis Pro. That and mak­ing apple and banana cakes, for the School Fair, for Avery, and in fact for Rocco, who smelled it last week when I was deliv­er­ing it to school and begged on bended knee for one. The writ­ing is going well enough, I sup­pose. I think I have been READ­ING too much cook­ery writ­ing, and it’s get­ting me down. After a bit I begin to think, “Why bother? There is so much good food writ­ing out there already and I can’t pos­si­bly pro­duce any­thing as good.” That’s when it’s time to walk away for a bit. But my desk is cov­ered with books writ­ten by mind-bendingly impres­sive word­sters, like Adam Gop­nik from the New Yorker, Jef­frey Stein­garten, Lil­lian Hell­man, Reeve Lind­bergh, the list goes on. I am frus­trat­ingly intim­i­dated by them all. But I must persevere.

And get this: I picked up Adam Gopnik’s mes­mer­iz­ing “Through the Children’s Gate: a Home in New York,” just to get a respite from bril­liant food writ­ing, and what do I find? A whole chap­ter called “The Cook­ing Game,” all about his acquain­tance­ship with Peter Hoff­man of the esteemed Savoy Restau­rant in SoHo, our old haunt, and their adven­tures cook­ing and talk­ing about food. The one sim­ple chap­ter blows away any­thing petty I might write on the sub­ject; I do not know any famous chefs, I’ve never held a cook­ing com­pe­ti­tion among three famous ones, that’s for sure. Aargh. Add to that, as I’m trawl­ing the inter­net for a way to tell Adam Gop­nik I think he is next to god­li­ness, I find an arti­cle he wrote for the New Yorker all about… food and writ­ing, cook­ing in fic­tion, and again… diamond-bright, not a wasted word, full of per­fect metaphors… I could go on, but for the sake of my self-esteem, I won’t. Ah well, onward and upward. The least I can do is to include some of these bril­liant people’s ideas in my own writ­ing, because it’s fun to delve into who influ­ences you. Even if it’s a bit exhaust­ing at times.

Right, tomor­row I shall be in the kitchen pro­duc­ing corn­bread and Lau­rie Col­win stuff­ing for our Thanks­giv­ing down the road. What fun to cel­e­brate with new friends, but how we will miss all of you, at home, doing the Amer­i­can things we have left behind. Happy Turkey Day, everyone.