Piers and Lin du Pré bought their new Fleming 55 / 129, Play d'eau, in 2003.
Red Pepper Sauce.
Rich, thick, looks brilliant and tastes even better
click to enlarge
As we continue to search for the beauty of flavour simplicity, we’ve honed this recipe to produce a sauce that’s one of the most beautiful to look at, let alone a tasting delight.
Ingredients
10 medium size red peppers
Unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
Just a tiny bit (thimbleful?) of veg stock
Maybe, just maybe, a drop or two of organic maple syrup
Preparation
Cut the peppers into quarters and remove all traces of the white bits and seeds.
Brush with a small amount of light olive oil on both sides, and place them on a baking sheet in a roasting tray, skin down.
Put the tray on the middle shelf of an oven at 180C.
After 20 mins or so when the peppers are cooked, remove and place the quarters in a poly bag to sweat a while.
One by one, take them out and remove the black bits, only. Be careful not to lose any of the juices.
When cooked, remove the peppers from the oven click to enlarge
Sieve through a ‘normal’ sieve using the back of a spoon to force the liquid through.
Liquidise again, adding just a pinch of salt and reasonable lump of unsalted butter to create a rich mousse.
Maple syrup?
If, and it’s a big if, you find the sauce to be slightly bitter, add a drop or two of maple syrup. A slight bitterness tends to be caused by the type of pepper and the time of year. Smaller peppers are sweeter than large.
Removing the skins
This is a question we’re often asked. The answer is simple.
Removing the skins,
- is a fiddly and time consuming job, and never 100% successful.
- removing the skins also removes some of the gorgeous oils
…so keep the skins and let the sieve remove them!
Piers and Lin
from the galley of
Play d’eau
Fleming 55
Beaucette Marina
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This sauce is absolute heaven. If you have a Vitamix there will be no need to sieve the peppers-there will be no trace of skins-only velvet smooth pepper.
This, I think, is one of the very best of all sauces and is fit for a queen! Lots of love,Hil.
Really? No need to sieve? I feel I need to put this to the test – when you next make the sauce, can you try pressing it through a fine mesh sieve and let me know what happens?
I agree – it’s a sauce that lifts so many foods, let alone looks simply stunning.
Hi Piers,
I have just made this divine red pepper sauce and whizzed it in the vitamix. There was no need for even half a thimbleful of stock and the sauce came out like a mousse. I DID sieve it- all of it- and there were no skin shreds at all. I also set the oven to 160 (because it is a fan oven) and the peppers took much longer than 20 mins to soften. When they were ready there were very few blackened bits-just a few tips which I cut off with scissors-and almost no escape of pepper juices. Then, all into the vitamix. And out poured heaven!
Lots of love, Hil x x