Roasted Red Pepper Dip

This was one of those warm Texas evenings, a bottle of rosé , pita chips and the great outdoors kinds of recipes. We had a few red peppers, some pine nuts, olives, capers, anchovies and "secret ingredient" lying around. So of course a dip was the answer. Served with an Argentinian rosé (Pinot Noir).  Bagel chips as an accompaniment and we had very happy tummies.
It turns out that there are quite a lot of ingredients in this. But we happened to have them all to hand.

Ingredients

3 Red Peppers - roasted and cut into pieces

1/2 cup pine nuts - toasted

2T olive oil (not extra virgin - it becomes bitter with the use of the immersion blender)

1 salt packed anchovy

6 Niçoise olives, pitted

1T capers rinsed and drained

1t Habanero vodka (aka secret ingredient). May substitute any hot pepper sauce, but if vinegared, reduce vinegar in overall recipe

2T Sherry vinegar

Salt to taste

Method

Place all the ingredients except the vinegar and salt into the immersion blender's beaker and pulse until almost smooth. Crunchy peanut butter texture is what you are aiming for.

Taste once the desired texture is attained. Add salt (if necessary) and sherry vinegar to taste.

Chill and serve with pita chips

A kind of panzanella

It was a warm evening in September, here in TX. While the tomatoes are over, I was able to find some nice cherry toms and yellow small tomatoes at the store. Madame likes to use our home grown basil and bread in salads, so here is a variant on panzanella. It uses the bread in 2 ways - one mixed in to soak up all the juices and the other as a large crostini for display and crunch. The beer served with this is the excellent DuPont Saison.

There's a handy tip for slicing tomatoes and olives here http://seabirdskitchen.blogspot.com/2012/09/halving-olives-and-baby-tomatoes.html

Ingredients

10oz mixed small (cherry sized) tomatoes, sliced in half
6 oz pitted mixed greek olives
2T rinsed and drained capers
2 cloves garlic, sliced finely
Juice of 1 orange
1 cup whole basil leaves (divided use)
4 large slices of bread, grilled (or toasted)
High quality olive oil (drizzling)
Large crystals of sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
a couple of ounces of Pecorino Romano, shaved from a larger piece using a vegetable peeler.

Method

Halve the tomatoes and olives. Place in a gallon zip lock bag. Add the capers, garlic and all but 12 leaves of the basil chiffonaded. Add the orange juice Refrigerate for a couple of hours to let the flavors blend.

When ready to serve, grill the bread slices (or toast then if you prefer). Cut 2 of the slices into croutons, halve each of the other 2. Mix the croutons into the olive/tomato mixture and allow to stand for a few minutes - to soak up the juice.

Place the halved toast on the plate, and pile the olive/tomato mixture over most of the toast, leaving some of the toast uncovered so that it remailns crunchy and acts as a handle.

Drizzle the olive oil over the salad, decorate with the remaining basil leaves and a few grinds of pepper. Sprinkle large sea salt crystals for crunch. Arrange the sliced Pecorino Romano on top and serve.

Note

There were only 2 of us eating this as a main course. There was about 1/3rd of the olive/tomato mixture left over for a lunch time salad today.