Italian-Arab Goulash

It is actually called, Pepperonata, which is an Italian vegetable stew. But I like to add cous cous to make it middle Mediterranean.

Recipe:

a big eggplant
4 peppers
a huge onion
garlic
olive oil
2 cups plum tomatoes
salt
pepper
sugar
1/3 cup wine
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
1 cup of cous cous

Eggplant One half hour before you are ready to cook, slice a one pound eggplant into four lenthwise sections and salt. Put this in a colander for half an hour. When done, scrape off all the salt and cut into cubes.

Cut up before you are ready to cook, the following veggies:
Onion one really big onion sliced into slivers or up to 3 smaller onions
Garlic two or three cloves of garlic smashed or crushed
Peppers- 2, red, 2 yellow or for those who do not like peppers, 4 cubanelle peppers. (They are the long light green peppers you may see in the supermarket. Their taste is less intense.)
Tomatoes 2 cups of Italian San Marzo tomatoes (from a big can and without the juice). Chop them up into big chunks.

Heat up a dutch oven or a deep frying pan. It has to be at least 12 inches across the bottom.

Olive oil -when the pan is hot, add the olive oil and then the garlic, onions and peppers and cook for about 5 minutes or until they get floppy.
Then add the eggplant. And after about 5 minutes-
Then add the tomatoes
Add some salt and put in some freshly ground pepper to your taste.
Stir it up. Put a lid on it. Lower the heat.
Cook for 15 minutes, stirring it every once in a while.

Wine Put about 1/3 cup of any kind of wine into a measuring cup. Add...
Balsamic Vinegar-about 1/4 cup and mix it up. Add a bit of
Sugar and mix it up some more. Pour it into the pot and stir.
Raise the heat to reduce the liquid. Cook til it is reduced a bit.

Now you can do one of two things. You can take the pot off the stove and serve the peperonata over a bed of cous cous that has been cooked to the package directions. OR
You can add instant cous cous (Near East brand) and stir it into the hot peperonata, cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

adapted from Romagnoli's Table

Immortal Peppers

My mom was Italian. Filetese to be exact. What? You do not know what a Filetese is? A Filetese is a person who comes from the great Italian metropolis of Fileto. Or Filetto. I can never remember. Current population: 300 or so families. But when I was growing up in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, and my family described OTHERS as either being Filetese or not Filetese, I believed Filete to be the capital of Italy.

Whatever. The Filetese were, at least, extremely good cooks and my mom and grandmother were among the best of those.

In the 1960's when I was a student at Penn State University, my mom would send me food during finals week. She would put the hot food in a styrofoam ice bucket, wrapped in layers and layers of newspaper and surrounded that with aluminum foil. Then she would take it to the Martz bus company in Scranton in the morning and eight hours later, I would get a call from the bus station in State College telling me my package had arrived. I would then get in a taxi and pick it up and bring it back to Lyons Hall. It was still very warm!

So many of the girls on my floor loved the food, that I would only get a few bites at best. She would make rigatoni in her special sauce with grated romano on top and send it with a side of peppers sauteed in olive oil. These peppers are the most divine things in the world. Sweet, savory, and never - never enough. They are eaten with fresh Italian bread - torn from the loaf, not cut. They are good hot and they are good cold.

Here is an approximation of my mom's recipe.

At least six peppers and if you have time and a big enough saute pan, you can add more.
Slice them lengthwise in about 6 slices to a pepper.
a clove of garlic
olive oil enough to coat the bottom of the pan very well. Do not be stingy.
Heat the garlic in the oil over medium heat. DO NOT BROWN THE GARLIC. If you do you will have to throw out the garlic and the oil and start over. This, my nephew TJ taught me. In fact, TJ should be writing these recipes, not me.

When the oil is hot, add the peppers. Keep adding peppers as they get smaller and start to wilt. Cook them down until they are completely wilted, browned and fragrant with the escaping sugars. Don't be surprised if this takes about an hour. Keep watching it, making sure that the peppers do not burn, but are nice and brown nevertheless.

When done, pour out the peppers and the oil that is left into a serving plate and then eat the whole thing before anyone has a chance to see you. Sop up all oil with the best Italian bread you can find.