Transcription
At a certain point in the summer in Italy, it's all about peppers. Different colors, shapes, sizes. It's peppers everywhere. And today I'm going to show you how to make a pepperonata. It's a very home style dish, very southern Italian. It's really good, and I think your family's going to love it. So, let's put it together.
So, for ingredients, we have some fresh basil, a yellow pepper, red pepper, some potatoes, tomatoes, a chili pepper, a red onion, salt, olive oil, doncia agro, and some bread, because this is one of those meals where you pick up a loaf of bread, and you call it dinner.
Now, this dish comes together pretty quick, so we're just going to kind of prep and cook at the same time. So, the first thing we're going to do is chop up some potatoes. I have these peeled, and we're going to cube them. And you want to kind of keep these chunks large, on the larger side.
So, now we're just going to heat up a generous amount of olive oil, and we'll start cooking the potatoes. So, the potatoes kind of take the longest time to cook, so we're going to start with the potatoes. So, we'll get some olive oil in here, and we'll add in the potatoes. We'll let these potatoes cook for a few minutes.
In the meantime, we'll start prepping the peppers. So, I have a yellow pepper and a red pepper, and honestly, you could really use any pepper you want, but I like the color and flavor of these two. So, we're going to cut up the peppers in slices. Clean this out. And this is like very rustic, so if you like thick slices of peppers, thin slices of peppers, it's really all preference. I'm going to keep some of these yellow peppers long, and I'm going to cut some of them in half, just for uh aesthetics. And then, nothing really goes to waste, so we'll take this stem part right here, and just trim off the pepper off the side. This red pepper is a little funky. Cut that off. And out. Slice this up. Check on the potatoes. Looking good here.
So, we got all the peppers chopped up. So, we're just going to throw them right in the pan. We're just going to kind of let them sit right on top of the potatoes. Not going to mix it. Throw them all in there. So, now we'll just let this cook for a few minutes just like this.
In the meantime, we'll chop up an onion. So, I have one red onion. And we'll cut this in slices. All right. And we'll start prepping the tomatoes. And I have about a about a good cup of tomatoes here. So, we're going to cut these in half. These are pretty big. I might cut them in thirds. And the tomatoes wind up breaking down in here and they create a nice sauce in this dish. So, they they really absorb all the flavors in the pan and then bring everything together.
So, we'll give this a little mix. See how the potatoes are doing. It smells amazing. Just kind of nestle the peppers right in. So, this dish really it takes about I would say about 20 25 minutes from start to finish. And it's really all about just kind of layering the ingredients into the pan. So, right now once the peppers start to soften up a little bit, I'll add in the onions and the tomatoes. But, I want to let this cook for a few more minutes now that I mixed up the peppers and the potatoes.
So, while these are softening up, we have one last thing to prep, the chili pepper. And I have a dried chili pepper. And this is It's to bring in a lot of heat into this dish. And a lot of the heat actually sits in the the seeds. So, if you kind of take them out, you remove some of the spiciness. So, what I'm going to do with this chili pepper is I'm just going to chop it up. It's dried chili pepper. And I'm actually going to add that in now. I will mix this up.
At this point, we're waiting for the peppers to soften up, and they'll be the indicator that the potatoes are ready. So, once the peppers are soft, we'll add in the tomatoes and the onions. We'll give this a little toss. So, the peppers are pretty soft now. I'm going to add in the onions. We'll just stir these onions in. And we'll go in with the tomatoes. Beautiful tomatoes. Mix this up.
And this is really one of those dishes you're not going to find on a restaurant menu. This is I say it all the time, but it's really like a home-style dish. And it's very popular in the summer, pepperonata. Every like region in Italy makes it a little different. I'm adding a little bit of a Sicilian twist to this. So, we're going to go in with a little dolce agro, which is just white wine vinegar mixed with sugar. And in Italy, they sell it already pre-mixed. But, obviously, if you can't find this, you could just mix a shot of white wine vinegar and a little bit of sugar. So, we're just going to add a little bit of that in here. It's going to give that nice sweet and sour flavor. And we're going to season this all up with a little salt and some fresh basil. And now, we'll just mix this all up. And this looks amazing, and it smells even better. And that's really it. So, we're just going to let this simmer for a few minutes. Let the flavors come together. I said the flavors have been coming together for 25 minutes, so we'll let this sit and simmer.
And now we're going to cut up some bread. And I feel like you need to have some bread with this dish. It's a must. So, we'll cut up some bread. And like I said in the beginning of the video, pick up a loaf of bread. Call it dinner. Call it lunch. Call it whatever, but definitely get some bread.
And you could see that the tomatoes pretty much fell apart in here. And it really created this sauce in this pan that's clinging to the peppers, the potatoes, everything. And if you come in here, you could see it. You could see that the potatoes have this glossy color on them. And there is just so much flavor on those potatoes. They're so good. So, this is perfect. We're going to shut this off. And we're going to get this on a plate. I said I was going to put this on a plate, but I think we're just going to eat this right out of the pan.
So, what you could do is get a slice of bread and put a little bit of everything on it. Little pepper, potato, onion, tomato. Just make like a little crostone. Or you could do what I like to do is just pick at it. And just pick and eat bread with it. It's kind of my way of doing it. So good. And also, if you're doing it my way, you could also dip the bread in the pan. And really get some of that, cuz that's like just pure flavor right there.
This actually tastes even better as it sits. So, if you look in here, you could really see that as it's sitting here, it's it's really like everything's really coming together. So, this really tastes even better at room temperature. So, you don't have to eat it right away. And I think this is really good for like parties or with family, family dinners, barbecues, and stuff. And I have an aunt in Calabria, and she makes this, and she makes it this way. It's just I always try to recreate hers. And being in Italy right now, this really tastes just like hers. So, it's really good. You definitely have to try this recipe. I'm telling you it's perfect for the summer.
So, and I also have a caponata linked right here. That one's an eggplant caponata. It's like a Sicilian classic. You should definitely try that. But definitely try this one, and let me know how you like it in the comments. Don't forget to hit the bell, like, and subscribe.