Quick, colourful peppers relish

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 11

Quick, colourful peppers relish

Alison Holst’s

Food Facts

Red and green peppers always look so beautiful

that it is a pleasure to select them, unpack and cook them.

Red and green peppers are picked from the same plant. The small green fruit form after the potato-like flower dies, and it grows to its full size often hidden under the plant’s leaves. In warm weather, if left on the plant, the pepper ripens, going through a patchy-coloured stage, and finishing up a beautiful scarlet red.

If you eat a slice of green pepper, then a slice of red pepper you will be able to taste the difference, because the red pepper is sweeter. It is worth adding red and green peppers to salads and cooked vegetable mixtures because they have a very high vitamin C content. Apart from this, their texture and flavour make them interesting. They are especially good in pickles because they don’t turn soft and mushy. Unfortunately green peppers lose their bright green colour, turning olive green, but the red peppers stay scarlet, and make the pickles quite beautiful. I make lots of different pepper relishes, jellies, and we enjoy them all.

This recipe is very quickly made. I chop the peppers then the onions in my food processor, rather than mincing them, because I like the pieces of pepper a bit bigger than I get them using the coarsest blade of the mincer.

If you do likewise, take care not to over-process. Remember that for coarse but even chopping you should not put too much in the processor bowl at one time, and you should use “on-off” or “pulse”, bursts, so that the unchopped vegetables can fall to the bottom of the bowl.

After removing stem, seeds and pith, chop the peppers roughly into about eight squarish pieces before you process them.

You will find that this relish is good with hamburgers, hot dogs, saveloys, cold lamb, ham, chicken and turkey, and that it tastes good on crackers, with cream cheese or Cheddar cheese.

Take care not to overthicken it. Use a level measuring tablespoon of cornflour. If you use a rounded household tablespoon you will finish with a relish which is too thick.

500 g mixed green and red peppers 2 medium onions 1 cup white vinegar OR 1 cup water and 2 tsp glacial acetic acid 1 teaspoon celery salt 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon mustard seeds 1 teaspoon dry mustard Vt teaspoon tumeric

% cup sugar 1 tablespoon cornflour Use a mixture of red and green peppers for this recipe. At least half the peppers should be bright red. Remove the stems, seeds and white pith from the peppers and cut each half in four squarish pieces. Mince or food process, taking care not to chop too finely. Cut the onions into pieces of similar size, and pour one litre of boiling water over the vegetables. Leave for two minutes then drain well. Put the drained vegetables into a large saucepan with the remaining ingredients except the cornflour. Bring to the boil then boil 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Mix the cornflour to a paste with a little water. Thicken with just enough of this to obviously thicken the liquid. Remember that the relish will thicken more on cooling. Pour into hot, sterilised jars and top with screw tops while hot, or let cool and seal with paraffin wax then cellophane.