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Antipasti .... simple get ahead starters for a summer dinner



We had a lovely dinner on Saturday. We had decided not to cook anything that involved too much stress or effort ... that meant cooking stuff I had done before.
Both of these dishes aren't really recipes they are just a question of putting together some ingredients in a tried and tested but not slavish way.
The peppers are based on Piedmontese peppers that you will find in many recipe books and indeed elsewhere on this blog.
I 'pimped up' the basic recipe, as Jamie would say, by adding some torn mozarella, rocket and black olives to the basic cooked peppers.

 Peppers with tomatoes and anchovy

  Serves 6

 Ingredients
3 red and 3 yellow peppers
5 tablespoons olive oil
36 cherry tomatoes
3 garlic cloves, peeled and cut into slivers
1 tin anchovy fillets
1 bunch fresh basil or marjoram
100g/4oz capers
buffalo mozzarella
black olives, pitted
Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Halve each pepper lengthways and remove the core and seeds. Place the peppers in a lightly oiled baking dish, cut side up. Into each half put three tomatoes, a few slivers of garlic, one or two anchovy fillets, a few basil leaves and three or four capers. Lightly drizzle the peppers with the remaining olive oil and season.

Pour about 300ml (10fl oz) water into the base of the baking dish to prevent the peppers from sticking. Cover the dish tightly with foil. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven. Remove the foil, and reduce the oven temperature to 120-150C/250-300F and bake for a further 40 or 50 minutes or until the peppers are soft.

When cool add the olives some roughly torn mozzarella and a few rocket leaves and drizzle with your very best extra virgin olive oil.

Serve at room temperature

Asparagus and Parma ham

This one really isn't a recipe.

Ingredients 

24 spears of asparagus
12 slices of Parma ham
extra virgin olive oil
red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Method

Cook the asparagus in boiling salted water for 3 or 4 minutes. You want it cooked but not too soft, it should still have a little bite when you drain it.
Allow to cool a little whilst you make a dressing of one tbs red wine vinegar 2 -3 tbs olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Dress the asparagus whilst still warm .. it will soak up some of the flavour of the dressing better that way.
Put to one side
Lay the ham out on a plate then put the asparagus and a little rocket on top



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