We harvested lots of peppers during the months of September and October!
I have the same three varieties in my garden that we always grew in Calabria: sweet Italian peppers, peperoni di Senise and a couple of corno di toro yellow peppers. The peperoni di Senise are ideal for drying, as they have a thin skin and dry quicker than the Italian sweet peppers. Because September in the Bay Area is also our Indian summer, we are able to dry them outside.
Here are some pictures of my dad stringing all the peppers from our harvest:
He hangs them out in the open until they are fully red and dried. This can take up to a month or so, depending on the weather.
Each string of peppers is called a ristra:
And this is what the peperoni di Senise look like when they are completely dried:
We grind up these peppers into pepe rosso, a mild, sweet paprika-like powder, that we use in making Calabrian sausage. The ones that we don’t grind we keep whole and use during the winter months in many braised dishes. There is a winter snack made in my town of Verbicaro made with these dried peppers, called pipi arrusckuati in my dialect and peperoni cruschi in Italian. They’re like potato chips, but made with peppers instead. I will tell you more about this snack when I make them during the upcoming winter months.
Although some of the sweet Italian peppers end up dried, we use most of them fresh in various dishes. One of my favorite ways to eat sweet Italian peppers is to remove the stem and seeds, put an anchovy inside, and pan fry them whole in olive oil. We also use them fresh in frittate, pan fried with potatoes or with eggplants and tomatoes, stuffed and baked, grilled and peeled with olive oil and garlic, tossed with pasta–you name it, we make it.
In the next post I will include a recipe that you can prepare with red and yellow bell peppers, which are more readily available in this country. The recipe will be one that didn’t make it in my cookbook. For all the other pepper recipes that I’ve mentioned above you will need to wait until next fall, when my cookbook, My Calabria, will be published.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Buon Giorno e grazie per le notizie italiane.
I just have one question about the stuffed peppers; fresh or canned anchovies inside the peppers? It sounds divine.
Thanks,
Mandy
Rosetta, this was a wonderful post – I loved the photographs. Did you see the big article in Saveur a couple of months ago about these peppers? It inspired me to order some of the dried ones.
Congratulations on your new cookbook! Count me in as being the first in line to get one. Can’t wait!
Mandy,
I put in anchovies preserved under salt or under oil (one filet per pepper). Give it a try …. they are so good.
Rosetta
Elaine,
Have you been able to find the dried peppers in this country? Let me know if you have a source as many students ask me where to buy them …
Rosetta
i in love with your site ive added it to one of my favorites….i might even feature it when planting season comes around again…thank you so much and please keep it up…dont stop.
Rosetta: Di Palo Selects has had them in the past but my last order was backordered. They thought they would get a shipment in the middle of September, and now they think it will be November. This is the only source I have been able to find, but obviously, they are having trouble right now getting them. You are lucky that you grow some!
http://www.dipaloselects.com/
Elaine
will you need recipe testers for your cookbook? Or is it done already?
Renee,
The book has been done for over a year. It will be published next Fall 2010. Thanks for asking if I needed recipe testers.
Rosetta
Hi Rosetta
Your plants are amazingly healthy and growing so well!
Thanks for the great web page.
BTW, I have been chasing down the seeds of peperoni di Senise.
I have a lot of Japanese seeds imported from Japan and not available here and wondering if we could trade.
Please send me email. thank you!
Hi Rosetta:
I too have been looking for the seeds of the peperoni di Senise. Is there anything I can trade you from Hawaii – Kona Coffee? (we’re not allowed to ship plants/seeds out of the island unless inspected by Agriculture)
rosetta,
excellent website , how good will the book be, just one thing here in england i can’t buy everclear any alternatives i wonder?
keep up the good work!
stephen
Stephen,
A lot of people use Vodka 100 proofs to make limoncello. I haven’t used it but it seems to work just as well.
Rosetta
These peppers look amazing! We grow cayanne and dry them for peperoncino, but we can never get that ruby red color that transforms the sausage from pink to bright red. We use a hot pepper powder my father in law brings back form Papanice Calabria every year. I would love to try and grow this peperoni di senise. Is there a website I can order seeds from and do you think it possible to grow in new york?
Last year we grew a variety of different peppers in flower pots on the rear porch. I noticed that if you desire peppers that resemble the ones that you would purchase, you need to keep the leaves lush so they cover the peppers because the ones that get too much sun turn a different color. I thought they looked festive and they had no difference in taste.
Rosetta, I have a dozen peperoni di Senise plants, from the seeds I received from you, in my garden this year. Our season just started here in West Virginia. I saw several questions here about where to buy the dried peppers. One source I have found is http://store.dipaloselects.com/pedisedr.html, though they are out of stock right now. I have not ordered from them yet, but they have them online for sale. They sell a 20g package for $7.99 when they are available. They also sell fried ones. Thanks again for your help.
It looks amazing! I’ll try to do it!