Hold the red peppers
Red peppers are ready for the kitchens and classrooms at the Culinary Insititute of America in Hyde Park. (Oct. 24, 2012) Credit: Rory Glaeseman
A friend told me about a disappointing meal he’d had recently, concluding with, “and the salad had red peppers in it.” This friend has apparently absorbed my dining-out prejudices, down to the nit-pickiest. I hate to see red peppers in salad. “The last refuge of the salad scoundrel,” I always call them.
It’s not that I dislike red bell peppers when they are on their own — roasted, sauteed, pureed (with eggplant) into avjar, the great Serbian pepper-eggplant sauce. But their distinctive flavor marries badly with most other salad ingredients, and the chef’s intent in deploying them is invariably “to add color.”
To which I respond, “Why?“
A green salad is perfect in its greenness like a golf course, a shamrock, a hedgerow. It needs red pepper the way the Mona Lisa needs a red balloon.
