Basque Piperade

We decided it was time to have our friends over for dinner the other night. They are a fun loving couple that enjoys quality food as much as our family does.  Two small plates to start, a piperade with egg, and some triple cream brie with our raspberry/pepper sauce on toasted baguette.  Entrée was a seared albacore tuna with tomatillo garnished with chive flowers.  We choose garden fresh sautéed green beans and patty pan squash with shallots as a side. A lot of these dishes used up things in the fridge. The piperade was from left over peppers from a lunch I catered for my wife’s open house. The squash and beans came from the garden, and the tomatillo sauce was left over from some braised beef the other night.

A piperade is a Basque Pepper stew that involves cooking down of onions, garlic, peppers, and tomatoes in olive oil.  This creates a beautiful sauce that can be used for all sorts of lovely things. The key to the recipe is good olive oil, quality dried peppers, and a bit of time. The recipe should use espelette dried peppers that originate from the Basque region of Spain/France, but not all of us have such ingredients.  I use a combo of ancho, chilpolte, and paprika powder as a substitute.

I love to use the piperade as a brunch item or an appetizer. A friend of mine who owns two amazing restaurants in the Portland area introduced this dish to me. The first time I had piperade, it was served with a duck egg and grilled bread as an appetizer at Toro Bravo in Northeast Portland. I fell in love with it and so did my wife, who is usually shy of runny egg yokes. Since then I have recreated/adapted it from a recipe that he put online. It never fails to impress, and is easy to make.

Basque Piperade

Serves 3-4.

5 mixed bell peppers (red, yellow, green)

1/3 cup of good quality olive oil

1/2 an large onion, thinly sliced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tablespoon of paprika (I used smoked)

1 teaspoon of ground espelette chiles (I subbed ancho/chilpotle powder)

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon of sea salt

Pinch of sugar

1 28oz. can of tomatoes, whole or diced

2 or 3 eggs, the fresher the better

French baguette or high quality choice bread

Start by roasting the bell peppers. Cut in half, remove the stems, seeds, membrane, and rub with olive oil. Roast them under the broiler, skin side up, until they are charred and blackened on the skin. Remove from broiler and put in a plastic bag to the steam a bit, the skins will remove easily after 15-20 minutes. Peel off the skin and roughly dice the peppers. You could skip this step and buy a couple of jars of roasted red peppers, but it will be more expensive and not yield as complex of flavors.

In a large a sauté pan put the oil over medium heat. Heat oil 2-3 minutes and add sliced onions, cooking till just translucent. Add garlic and all the spices so the flavors can bloom in the oil. After about 2-3 minutes, the dried peppers should smell great and infuse the oil with flavor.

Add in the tomatoes and roasted peppers and bring to a simmer. Depending on what type of canned tomatoes you use, sometimes a pulse or two with an emersion blender will get a nice consistency.

Let it cook for about 20-30 minutes until the flavors have blended and the tomatoes have cooked down a bit. Add salt and pepper to taste.

The pepper stew should be hot and ready by now. Depending on the amount of people you serve, or what course your cooking, ladle about 1½ -2 cups of the mixture into a smaller sauté pan appropriate for the oven. Using the back of a large spoon, make a depression or two in the stew for the eggs to sit. Crack the eggs, one at a time, in a small bowl and then transfer into the prepared depressions in the stew.

Put the pan into a 450-degree oven, and keep a close eye on it. You want the eggs to set, and still have a runny yoke. This takes about 5-10 minutes. While this is cooking, slice and toast/or grill the bread. The bread will be the vessel to get the piperade into your mouth.

A small one made for two. 

When the eggs are cooked, it is ready to eat. Use the toasted bread, maybe get a spoon, crack that yolk and get dipping. There will be leftover pepper stew that you may have not used depending on how many people are eating. It keeps for about a week in the fridge due to the acidity in the tomatoes. You can use it as a base for all sorts of great dishes. Any seafood is killer cooked in it, or topped with it. Brown some chicken and braise in the stew, so good. Enjoy~

Spicy Pickled Red Onions~

In our home we cook all types of food.  I love to cook outside when I can, grilling and BBQing many American and Northwest classics. We like ethnic foods of all types, especially Mexican, Japanese, Spanish, Thai, Caribbean, and Vietnamese. Living in Oregon, we have a wealth of fresh and amazing ingredients to work with. The seafood and produce are some of the best in the world, and the beers and wines are top class. We try to eat as local and organic as much as we can afford. That being said, we try to make lots of our own sauces, jams, and condiments each year. My wife is amazing at canning, and we have a large shelf in the pantry to store all the love of summer.

I have been experimenting with relishes and hot sauces lately. One condiment that has stood out as a clear keeper is Spicy Pickled Red Onions. I love to use them on tacos, sandwiches, and burgers. They add a tangy/sweet/spicy crunch into foods that I find irresistible. The best part is how easy they are to make. You will need…

-       1 small-medium red onion

-       1 large jalapeño

-       ¼ teaspoon (pinch) of sea salt

-       5 peppercorns

-       10 coriander seeds

-       3 tablespoons sugar

-       ¾ cup of distilled white vinegar

-       1 bay leaf

          Cut up the onion in half then cut into thin half-moons slices. Slice up the jalapeño into about 10 slices. I like to keep the seeds and membrane in the pepper to keep it spicy. You can remove them if it is too much heat for you. Next combine the liquids and the spices (remaining ingredients) into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over med-high heat. Add the peppers and onion slices and turn off the burner. 

          The onions will wilt a bit and hopefully become covered by the liquid soon. Stir a bit and let it sit on the stovetop for about 30 mins or until cool enough to transfer to a clean mason jar. This amount will usually fit perfectly in a one pint mason jar.  If there is extra, I usually snack on them right then and there. Once transferred, I store in the fridge. These keep for a month or two if you can get them to last that long. 

          

Tomato Chile Braised Beef on
Coconut Rice, Tomatillo Salsa
& Spicy Pickled Red Onion

       














Your burgers, sandwiches and Mexican food will never be the same without this great topping. Don’t let my limited imagination stop you from using them on whatever you see fit.  My wife put them on a Cubano Sandwich and they were fantastic.  

 

   Chile Colorado, Tomatillo Salsa,
   Beans, Rice & Spicy Pickled Red Onion

Here We Go...

Welcome to my new blog, “Did Not Die in Vain”.  There are a lot of food blogs out now, and I was not sure if the world needed another. However, with encouragement from friends and family, I decided to see where this takes me. I figured it is a place I can keep track of the meals I create and the recipes that accompany them. This way I can share photos of meals with family and friends, many of whom were here to enjoy them. Living in Oregon over the last 15 years I have run across some great places to eat and enjoy. Hopefully you will find something here to stimulate your palate and mind. We will see where this whole blog thing goes.

            The name Did Not Die in Vain comes from a funny quote of my dad’s. Growing up he would frequently say, when eating something especially tasty, “Well, this (insert food item here) did not die in vain!” Over the last few years it was proclaimed at almost every meal we shared together, and thus became a running joke amongst the family. We would see him enjoying his meal, eagerly wait for the sentence to start and then, giggling, finish with the “did not die in vain” with him.  This took our joke to a new level.  Now while eating with us Dad will only say, “this (insert food item here)…” pause and then look up at us to chime in the finishing line.  Needless to say, it had to become the name of my blog.

           

And so it begins…