A sweet pepper eaten raw is crisp and pleasant. A sweet pepper charred black, steamed in its own heat and slipped out of its skin is something else entirely — silky, smoky and almost sweet enough to be a dessert. It is the single best thing you can do with a home-grown pepper, and it happens to be naturally vegan: nothing here but vegetables, oil, lemon and salt.
This is the dish that appears on Mediterranean tables under a dozen names — escalivada, peperoni arrostiti, salata de ardei. Every version comes down to the same three steps: burn, peel, dress.
Choosing your peppers
Thick-walled sweet peppers are best: bull's horn types, ramiro shapes and the classic blocky bell all work beautifully. Red, orange and yellow are sweeter than green, which stays a little grassy. Pick them fully coloured and firm — a pepper left on the plant to ripen properly is worth two picked green. Long, thin-walled varieties char faster and are harder to peel, so watch them closely.
Ingredients
Serves 4 as a side. Prep 15 minutes, plus 20 minutes steaming. Cooking 20–30 minutes.
- 6 large sweet peppers, mixed colours
- 3 tbsp good olive oil
- 1 garlic clove, very finely sliced or crushed
- Juice of half a lemon, plus a little zest
- 1 tbsp capers, rinsed (or chopped green olives)
- ½ tsp flaky sea salt, and black pepper
- Optional: a handful of flat-leaf parsley or basil, torn
Method
- Char the peppers. Under a hot grill, on a barbecue, or directly over a gas flame, blacken them all over — turning every few minutes until the skin is blistered and mostly black. Take it further than feels comfortable; you are burning only the skin, and the flesh beneath is steaming gently. In an oven, roast whole at 220°C (200°C fan) for 30–40 minutes, turning once.
- Steam them. Put the hot peppers straight into a bowl and cover tightly with a plate or a lid for 20 minutes. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that makes peeling effortless: the trapped steam lifts the skin away from the flesh.
- Peel and seed. Rub the blackened skin away with your fingers — it should slide off. Tear each pepper open, pull out the stalk and seeds, and tear the flesh into wide strips. Do not rinse them under the tap; you will wash away all the smoke and sweetness. Save any juice that collects in the bowl.
- Dress while warm. Lay the strips on a plate with their reserved juices. Whisk the olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and zest together with the salt and pepper, and spoon it over. Scatter the capers and herbs on top.
- Wait. Leave for at least 30 minutes at room temperature before eating. An hour is better. Tomorrow is better still.
How to eat them
- As a side with anything off the barbecue, or as part of a spread of small plates.
- On toast with hummus or a smear of white bean purée.
- Folded through pasta or couscous with a spoonful of their oil.
- Piled into a sandwich with rocket and a few of the slow-roasted tomatoes from the recipe alongside.
- Blitzed with toasted almonds, garlic and a splash of sherry vinegar into a vegan romesco.
Keeping them
Layer the dressed peppers into a jar, top up with olive oil until covered, and keep in the fridge for up to a week. They genuinely improve for the first three or four days as the garlic and lemon work through them. Bring them back to room temperature before serving — olive oil sets solid in the cold and mutes the flavour.
Notes and variations
Add heat
A single charred chilli, peeled and shredded in with the sweet peppers, changes the dish completely. Chillies grown alongside your sweet peppers are ideal for this.
Make it a full tray
Char aubergine and red onion at the same time and dress everything together for a proper escalivada.
Growing enough of them
Peppers are slow starters — sow under cover in late winter and give them the warmest, brightest spot you have. Six good plants in a greenhouse or against a south-facing wall will keep a jar going all summer. See the seasonal planting calendar for timings.
Our pepper and chilli plants are raised from seed here at the nursery and hardened off before they leave us. Browse the current collection to see what is ready to plant.