Friday, October 7, 2011

Lecsó – or what to do with too many peppers

As noted in my previous post I had a lot of peppers, red and green, and tomatoes on hand from my last harvest and since I didn’t even consider to pickle or can them, only alternative for me was to cook and freeze them. One recipe that I knew would work was Hungarian Lecsó.
Lecsó is a sort of pepper, onion and tomato stew cooked slowly on stove-top for long time and served as is, with potatoes or meat and potatoes. Since I was going to freeze it I have made plain version that will be kicked up quite a bit when re-heated and served with whatever I choose. Just as an experiment I will one day chop the Lecsó and use it as a pizza sauce. I think that it will be quite good!
Cooking this dish is a walk in the park; it is the prep that takes so much time. Cleaning, seeding and slicing the peppers is so labor intensive! I tried to slice the peppers in food processor but I was faster slicing them with my Chinese cleaver than using Cuisinart. Well, I still have all my digits and without a single Band-Aid.
As usual, because of heavy bottom of the pot I use my pressure cooker. By the way, that is a lot of peppers to clean and cut!

Caramelize the onions...

add peppers and cook till they soften...

add tomatoes and cook for about 2 hours. At first covered and then with cover off.

Add Hungarian paprika and simmer for another 1/2 hour. If the sauce is too watery, add some tomato paste (I did).

Ready as a base for other recipes.

1 comment:

Sébastien said...

Do they in Central Europe traditionally dry peppers like they do in Latin American countries?