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.