Two years ago, I noted in this column that green peppers were thoroughly, and unjustly, out of fashion. Red peppers were everywhere, while green peppers were seen as rather embarrassing and declasse, fit only for Pizza Hut specials and bad pub salads. Influential food writers such as Alice Waters disparaged them as unripe, and therefore inedible. Green peppers were just not foodie enough.
Now, I am glad to say, green peppers are back. Moro: the cookbook (Ebury Press, £25), inspired by the Spanish-Moorish restaurant in Clerkenwell in London, looks set to be the most fashionable food book of the year, and contains numerous delicious recipes for green peppers. A fine example is "patatas a lo pobre", or poor man's potatoes, in which Spanish onions are softened in a large amount of olive oil, then stewed together with garlic, green peppers, bay leaves and waxy potatoes, until the whole dish is golden and sweet. The green peppers meld with the oil and impart a lovely smoky flavour to the potatoes. Moro recommends serving it with roast pork or grilled lamb.
In her first book, How to Eat, Nigella Lawson commented: "I never ever, no matter what I'm cooking, use green peppers." I wonder if the Moro book will change her mind, especially given that it is being marketed with a recommendation from her divine self on the dust-jacket. Perhaps Nigella was put off by badly cooked peppers. The trouble with green peppers is often that they aren't treated right. The authors of Moro, Samuel and Samantha Clark, understand that they should be either slow-cooked to the point of softness (as in serranitos, a tapas of fried green peppers, Serrano ham and toast) or left fresh and raw, as in gazpacho or esqueixada, a "refreshing" Catalan salad of salt cod, olives, peppers and cherry tomatoes.
Green peppers are not the only unfashionable ingredient to be made trendy by association with Moro. The Clarks are also keen on dried mint (Jamie Oliver would be appalled), cooking sherry, tinned vegetables and even paella, although not of the multicoloured Ibizan variety. Moro: the cookbook represents the point at which ingredients become so uncool they seem fresh and new again. This recipe, for instance, combines green peppers, sherry and paella rice. Make it and wonder at the fickleness of food fashion.
Monkfish rice
7 tablespoons olive oil
400g monkfish fillets, cut into 2-3cm pieces
2 large Spanish onions, finely chopped
2 green peppers, halved, seeded and finely chopped
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
800ml hot fish stock (or water)
250g paella rice
80ml fino sherry
1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika
1 lemon
(The Moro recipe contains saffron, too.)
"Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a 30-40cm paella pan or frying pan over a medium to high heat. Carefully add the monkfish to the pan and stir-fry until still just fractionally undercooked in the centre. Pour the monkfish and any of its juices into a bowl and put to one side. Wipe the pan clean with kitchen paper, and put back on the heat. Add the remaining olive oil and, when it is hot, the onions and peppers, and cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring every so often. Turn down the heat to medium, add the chopped garlic and fennel seeds, and cook for a further 10 minutes, or until the garlic and the onions have some colour and are sweet. Now add the rice to the pan and stir for 1 minute to coat with the vegetables and oil (up to now, everything can be done in advance, and you need only continue 20 minutes before you wish to eat).
"Put the heat to medium to high, and add the . . . sherry to the pan, followed by the hot stock. At this point, add half the parsley and the paprika and season perfectly with salt and pepper. Do not stir the rice after this, as it affects the channels of stick, which allow the rice to cook evenly. Simmer for 10 minutes or until there is just a little liquid above the rice. Spread the monkfish out evenly over the rice, along with its juices. Push each piece of monkfish under the stock. Gently shake the pan to prevent sticking and turn the heat down to medium to low. Cook for 5 minutes more, or until there is just a little liquid left at the bottom of the rice. Turn off the heat and cover the pan tightly with foil. Let the rice sit for 3-5 minutes before serving."
Serve with lemon and the rest of the chopped parsley. Moro decorates this with canned piquillo peppers, but I didn't have any.
