Two weeks ago I talked about how to cook Padrón peppers – and how I never prepare or use them any other way. Well… since we’ve been getting them rather regularly, I must admit I branched out a little. Not much.
It was still really hot last week, and so not having A/C, firing up a blistering hot cast-iron griddle in my kitchen was the last thing I wanted to do. But I had this bag of Padrón peppers… so I figured if Tom can roast Padróns in the farm’s wood-fired oven, I could probably grill them (outdoors – yay! no added heat in the house!). So I simply double-skewered them with bamboo skewers (see picture – makes them easier to ‘flip’ ‘cuz they don’t spin around when they get floppy this way) and popped them on the grill, just a few minutes per side, enough so they blistered and got soft… then I just treated them the same as always: remove to a bowl, drizzle with good olive oil and coarse sea salt and eat while still warm.
Okay, I know that’s not branching out so very much, but this was:
Instead of roasting or grilling I just rough-chopped the raw Padróns, seeds and all (did cut off stems though), chopped up some onions and garlic, and some tomatoes… sauteed the onions and padrons until soft and starting to brown (fairly high heat, stirring), added garlic and cooked another minute or so, then threw in the chopped tomatoes and cooked them all together until the tomatoes just started to get hot and soften. Can’t remember if I threw in any herbs but your certainly could… if you get basil this week, chop up and add a little. Anyway, that’s it! Less than ten minutes! I just put that over pasta and ate it. Yum! I like to drizzle my pasta sauce with additional “good” olive oil at the table and sprinkle on some salt as well, so I got the Padrón ‘olive-oil-coarse-salt’ thing going on after all; all I added was some onion, garlic and tomatoes. Oh, and pasta. 😉 You definitely got that “Padrón” flavor in the sauce though – it was lovely.