Pimientos de Padrón
Description
Small green peppers picked when they are young, roughly the size of your thumb. They’re fried in olive oil, salted, and served at many ta pas bars in Spain. Besides being salty and sweet, most people eat Pimientos de Padrón for the enjoyment of eating them uniquely eating them is considered a form of culinary Russian roulette. Why? because of the random distribution of heat in the peppers you never know which one is going to be hot. You eat your chillies by just picking them up by the stalk and bite, even if you don't get a hot one you are still rewarded by the multi layer taste of asparagus, sweet peppers, tomato,slightly bitter-sweet undertones
Hot or Not
After eating a large number of Padron ourselves, knowing which are hot and those that are not is still a puzzle. This season there have not being so many hot ones, I think due to the lack of really hot days. Now into late august they do appear to me hotting up, maybe due to a warmer period of weather. Our plants get watered only when really necessary, this year we have only watered our crop tunnel three times since May
History
As the story goes, Franciscan monks brought them to Spain from Mexico in the 18th century. They gained a name for themselves in the town of Padrón in the north-western province of Galicia. To this day, a festival is held every August in honour of these little peppers in the nearby village of Herbon
Cooking
- 20 or so whole peppers
- Add Olive Oil to cover the base of the pan and heat until smoking
- Add the peppers and keep moving them around
- Cook until blistered and brown, but don't overcook
- Add a spinkling of Sea Salt
- Serve on a plate, pick up by the stem and bite...!!
