Pimientos de Padrón

Serves 4

Where have they been all my life, their so easy, so great tasting, so much fun and so hard to find. My daughter Lindsay lives in San Francisco. Three years ago, on a Saturday she took us to the farmers market at the Ferry Plaza. One of the booths we stopped at was Happy Quail Farms. She suggested we buy some Pimientos de Padrón and have them as a appetizer with dinner. Hooked! Now every trip to the city we have to buy some. She also mails us some occasionally. I’ve taken it one step further and now grow them in our garden.
The easy part; you don’t need a recipe. I just put about 1/8 inch of extra virgin olive oil in a pan, throw in some peppers (about two dozen) heat and stir until the peppers are blistered on all sides. Remove them from the pan and sprinkle with some good salt. Hold them by the stem, bite and enjoy the great tasting part.
The fun part; most of those pepper will be sweet and mild but one or two may be real zingers. The problem is you can’t tell which ones are going to be hot, it’s kind of chili Russian roulette. Lindsay cheats by biting the tips off before eating the whole pepper. Enjoy as an appitizer or tapa, as a side dish to grilled meat or steaks. Drink any thing from cold beer, to red wine, Spanish Cava or last but not least Coke
The hard to find part; I’m going to help with this part, I’m giving you two possible links for peppers and one for seeds. Peppers: Happy Quail Farms and La Tienda.com. Seeds: Local Harvest.
For more information visit:Other Spain.