This is a great sauce for poached or grilled fish or poultry. It is customary in Italy to serve a poached or boiled meat with two or more sauces. Salsa Verde (page 362) and this sauce make a delightful pair. And it’s a snap to make right out of the pantry. It’s got a brilliant color and surprisingly complex flavor for such a simple preparation: sweet, mildly acidic, and piquant—or as hot as you want, if you add more peperoncino or Tabasco. Fresh eggplant, poached with the onions, gives the sauce even more depth (see box that follows).
Recipe information
Yield
about 1 1/2 cups
Ingredients
For the Poached Vegetable Base
For Finishing the Sauce
Recommended Equipment
Preparation
Poaching the Vegetable Base
Step 1
Pour the water and vinegar into a small saucepan and drop in the bay leaves, garlic cloves, onion, and shallots. Bring to a boil, and cook, uncovered, at a gentle boil for 25 minutes or so, until the vegetables are cooked through, translucent, and easily pierced with a fork. Turn off the heat, lift out the vegetables, and let them drain and cool briefly. Discard the bay leaves, and reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.
Processing the Sauce
Step 2
Purée the poached vegetables along with the remaining sauce ingredients in a food processor fitted with the metal blade for about 1 1/2 minutes, scraping down the bowl now and then, until absolutely smooth. Taste the sauce, and add more salt, peperoncino, or other seasonings if you like; mix in a little more poaching liquid for a thinner consistency.
Step 3
Serve the sauce at room temperature. Store for a week in the refrigerator.
Serving Ideas . . .
Step 4
A dipping sauce for the crisp turkey tenders on page 310.
Step 5
A second sauce for the Poached Veal Tongue on page 360 or the Poached Chicken on page 328.
Smooth Sweet Red Pepper Sauce with Eggplant
Step 6
I love the body and flavor that eggplant lends to this sauce.
Step 7
Follow the main recipe exactly, but add to the poaching pot 1 1/2 cups of firm eggplant peeled and cut in 2-inch chunks. (In summertime, I poach young tender-skinned eggplant without peeling.)
Step 8
Cook and drain the eggplant along with the onions and garlic. Before adding the eggplant to the food processor, remove any seeds from the chunks.
Step 9
And one more suggestion:
Step 10
If you happen to have on hand some homemade marinated eggplant all’Uccelletto (Poached Eggplant with Vinegar, Garlic, and Mint; page 252), you can use that instead. Take a cup (or two) of the eggplant wedges, with some of the mint in which they are marinating, and purée with all the other red-pepper sauce ingredients. This version of the sauce is so good, you should make the marinated eggplants just to try it!
