Basque Piperade
I've made this dish a few times for my friends and me and its always been successful. I first discovered this recipe last year at Gastronomy Night. For those of you who don't know what that is, all of the language clubs get together and cook ethnic meals from their respective countries. The French Club made basque piperade and chocolate mousse. It was amazing! Everyone went back for seconds and there weren't any leftovers!
As I said before, I've made this dish quite a few times. But I didn't know what anything else about the dish besides that it was French. So I did some investigating (looked it up in
Wikipedia). The word "piperade" is just a fancy word for omlette with tomatoes and peppers. The term "basque" refers to an ethnic group that live in France and Spain. Basque tribes have lived in this region for an estimated 7,000 years. In Basque society, women actually had rights (i.e. they could inherit, own land, have positions of power, etc). But that seemed to make the Spaniards mad and there was a massive witch hunt in the early 1600's. Eventually, Spain took over a large portion of the Basque Country. France now controls the regions of Labourd, Lower Navarre, and Soule. There is a lot more history to this that I'm leaving out, but you guys should definitely check it out. Its super interesting and not something taught in mainstream-history lessons.
Back to the recipe. So I always hate it when blogs put the recipe at the very end and the go on and on about other things in the beginning. I'll give you the recipe early on and then go on and on about other things. So here it is:
Basque Piperade (click here for printable version)
Ingredients
1 quart can whole peeled tomatoes
4-6 roasted sweet red bell peppers
10-15 cloves garlic
1 1/2 yellow onions
3-4 eggs
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp chili powder
2 bay leaves
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 cup olive oil
French Bread slices
Directions
1. Cut up the garlic, onions, and peppers
2. Sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil over medium-high heat until the onions are translucent
3. Add the spices and sauté for a couple more minutes until you can really smell the spice
4. Add the tomatoes. Break up the tomatoes (use two forks and tear them apart)
5. Add the roasted peppers and season with salt and pepper
6. Turn the heat down and simmer for 25-30 minutes
7. Take a spoon and make indents in the soup and crack an egg into each indent
8. Cover the pot and cook for 7-10 more minutes or until the eggs are cooked how you like them.
9. Meanwhile, toast the French bread slices.
10. Serve the soup with the bread and enjoy!
Now that that's out of the way, I can talk (or write) incessantly about how I cooked this dish and bombard you with a gajillion pictures. Yay! I probably won't put many pictures in here because I'm a bad photographer. Anyway, the first part of the recipe is fairly easy. Although you will want to roast your peppers ahead of time (if you're super lazy like me, I just skip the roasting step). I roasted my peppers this time so I could show you.
I use mini bell peppers (the little one you get in a bag) and I also used red, yellow, and orange.
I've tried it both ways (all red and mixed colors). The flavor isn't a drastic change and I think the yellow and orange add a nice color. Anyway, preheat your oven to 400F. Line a pan with tin foil and place the peppers on top. Cook the peppers for about 15-20 minutes. The side of the peppers that is on the foil will get well cooked. Once the one side of the peppers are cooked, flip them and cook for another 15-20min. After roasting peppers, the skin has to be removed so its okay if you burn the peppers slightly.
For those of you who know me well, I don't follow the recipe the same way everytime. I love to substitute things in or take things out and making the recipe a little more personalized. I encourage everyone to do this because then you learn what works together (like cucumbers in curry) and what doesn't (spaghetti noodles and curry). Anyway, I didn't prepare well for this recipe and didn't have any canned whole peeled tomatoes, so I just used canned diced tomatoes instead. I like using the diced tomatoes better because then I get to skip a step. I don't have to break up the whole tomatoes.
After letting everything simmer for awhile, put the eggs in. If you can't make an indent in the soup just yet, then let it simmer a little longer until it thickens up (thinks stew-thick). When I say indent, I don't mean a cavern. Just a space big enough for the egg. The original recipe says to cook the soup in the oven with the eggs in it. I adjusted the recipe because really, who wants to clean all these dishes. Not I. So instead of baking the whole concoction, I essentially poach the eggs in the soup. Once the egg whites aren't runny and gross, then you're done! Bon appetit!
