Red Pepper Puree

Wash Peppers

• Wash peppers (10 large red peppers), cut them in half, remove the inside, discard seeds. If there are any blemishes or spots on the skin remove those as well. Wash well.

Slow Roasting

• Layer peppers skin side up into a stainless steel pot or onto a baking sheet. Season each layer with salt (1 tablespoon). Cover with a kitchen towel and allow to sit for 2-3 hours. Then drain the liquid from a pot/baking sheet into a kitchen sink.
• Preheat oven to 220℃F/(105℃
• Place the baking sheet or large pot with the peppers in the oven, uncovered.

  Slow-roast for about 5 hours, stirring the peppers once every hour. The longer the peppers roast, the easier the skins will be to remove.

  After 4 hours, test one pepper. If the skin doesn’t peel away easily, continue roasting. The roasting time can vary depending on the thickness of the peppers and the amount of peppers you're roasting: thicker peppers may need more time for the skins to loosen.
• Once the skins peel away easily, remove the pot from the oven, cover them and let the peppers cool covered so they’re easier to handle. Steam during cooling helps soften peppers further. Using your hands or a small knife, peel the skins away from the meaty part of the peppers. The skins should come off easily. Peel all the peppers and discard the skins.

Blend Peppers to Make Puree

• Once you have removed all the skin, process all of the peppers' “meat” in the food processor until smooth. Congratulations, you just prepared pepper puree.

  You should have about 1 ½ to 2 cups pure red pepper puree. You can use it as it or blend with vegetable base.

Vegetable Base

• Preheat the oven about 400°F/200℃.

  Pour vegetables: onion (1 large onion), carrot (1 large carrot), celery (1 large stalk), unpeeled garlic (6 large cloves) on the baking sheet lined with parchment. Season with salt (1/4 teaspoon) and ground black pepper (1/4 teaspoon). Drizzle over olive oil (1 tablespoon). Toss together.

  Roast vegetables, until very soft and caramelized. Once vegetable as done, let them cool slightly. Push the roasted garlic cloves out of the shells. Then process roasted vegetables in the food processor until you have a thick paste. If it appears too chunky you can run it through a food mill.

Pepper Paste

• Into a pot add plain red pepper paste, pour in vegetable paste and stir well.

  Pour in vinegar (1/3cup), Dijon mustard (1 teaspoon), cayenne pepper (1/8 teaspoon, optional) and a small bay leaf.

  Bring mixture to boil, then lower to simmer and cook on low heat for 30 minutes and up to an hour. Paste is thick, it's important that you stir it frequently so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pot.

  Tip: Cover the pot with a splatter shield to prevent pepper paste splattering all over.
• Remove small bay leaf. If the mixture appears too chunky use stick blender to break up small piece of vegetables until smooth. Test the seasonings and season with salt and black pepper to taste as needed.

Storage

• I freeze my pepper paste into ice cube trays and once frozen I unload the cubes into a freezer safe container and freeze for long term. Frozen pepper paste cubes keep for at least a year in the freezer.