Food - Bee Wilson thinks the green pepper is getting a raw deal
Red peppers are now so ubiquitous as to have passed beyond the cliche and become a staple. It is almost inconceivable that you should have avoided them this summer; in sandwiches, in flans, in soups, with roasted tomatoes, with pasta, with goat's cheese, with basil and rich olive oil, in a roulade with aubergines, or even by themselves, the smoky-sweet grilled red pepper intrudes everywhere. Yet its unripe compatriot, the sweet green pepper, has vanished, except from soggy pizzas and ill-thought out salads. Why this pepper apartheid?
Feeling against the green pepper is strong, especially among people of taste. Alice Waters, Californian doyenne of vegetables, has written that it is "a mistake" even to sell peppers at the green stage. Green peppers, says Waters, are no more than unripe - and therefore imperfect - red peppers. All sweet peppers lose their green colour, passing through yellow, and orange or red, once they reach maturity. Some gourmets, therefore, take the lofty line that green peppers are unfit for human consumption. In her book How to Eat, Nigella Lawson asserts that "I never ever, no matter what I'm cooking, use green peppers". (In fact, on page 69 of the same book, she does include a recipe using green peppers, a turkey hash from her literary agent Ed Victor, but that's publishing for you . . . ) Simon Hopkinson has expressed similar opinions against the vegetable, though he makes an exception for gazpacho.
Many say they find the green pepper indigestible, just as green bananas are less easy on the stomach than ripe yellow ones. But much depends on what kind of pepper you use. Yes, the dark green Dutch variety can be disagreeable (Tom Stobart refers to the "pea-pod" quality of an inferior pepper), but they are by no means the only kind. Go to an Asian or Middle Eastern grocer's and you will find a wonderful array of green peppers, some small and hot, some long and cone-shaped, each suited to different dishes. Claudia Roden has written of peppers "varying in colour from olive, pale or dark green, to bright green, like a card-table felt". Ghillie Basan recommends "the long, perfumed and slightly piquant pale-green carliston pepper". She says they resemble Turkish slippers. Green peppers have an Arabian Nights romance, missed by those who spurn them.
Snobbery against the green pepper has become a self- fulfilling prophecy. Those who think them nasty make them nasty. Of course they are indigestible if you slice them raw with onions. (So are red peppers.) But blister their skins off and serve with thick yoghurt and they are perfectly mellow, without the sugariness of the red. Or serve in cold salsas with cucumber. Or in slow-cooked Turkish meze. Green pepper's subtle, adult flavour marries well with aubergines. If you can find a thin-skinned variety, they are a better foil for stuffing than red. And in the oppressive late-summer heat, green is surely a more refreshing prospect than red.
Green pepper jelly with yellow pepper cream
Sweat a chopped red onion in 25g of butter with three chopped green peppers and a pinch of sea salt until softened. Add 500ml water and simmer for 20 minutes. Season to taste with red wine vinegar, pepper and chervil, puree and sieve. Dissolve four leaves of gelatine (previously soaked in cold water) and chill until set. Serve with a cream made from a charred yellow pepper, skinned, sieved and mixed with cream, and sprinkle with snipped chives or chervil. (Adapted from Lindsey Bareham, who - quelle surprise - uses red peppers.)
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