Warm Salad of Pan-fried Yellow Peppers & Peaches

—

13 March 2018 BY Julie Biuso
SERVES: 6

Wait until late summer or early autumn to make this dish. Choose sweet and juicy, golden, firm-fleshed peaches, the type you use for bottling. This is a fabulous salad served with a French roasted chicken.

Ingredients

2 yellow peppers (bell peppers/capsicums) 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil 3 late-season, firm peaches such as Golden Queen Butter Flaky sea salt Freshly ground black pepper Handful of basil leaves

Method

1 Cut the yellow peppers in half, remove the cores and seeds and cut into chunks. Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a medium frying pan and when it is hot, add the peppers. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning the peppers, until they are just starting to wilt. Transfer them to a dish.

2 Leave the skin on the peaches unless it is tough or bitter, and slice into thick wedges. Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and when it is hot, drop in a knob of butter. Add the peach wedges while the butter is sizzling and cook for about 3 minutes a side; turn carefully with a spoon and fork. Add the peppers to the pan, season with salt and pepper and pour everything, juices too, into a bowl. Strew with basil and serve.

3 If serving with French Roasted Chicken, have the chicken carved and arranged on a platter and pour peaches and peppers and all the juices over the chicken. Strew with basil, toss lightly and top with crispy tarragon if you have it. Serve immediately.

Recipe Notes

The peppers can be done an hour or so ahead, and the peaches fried at the last minute.

Pan-fried yellow peppers and peaches are fabulous served with French Roasted Chicken. And they’re dynamite served with soft creamy curls of prosciutto, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and served with crispy bacon, or drizzled with a little mandarin or lemon-infused olive oil and serve with seafood (exquisite), or sprinkled with chopped red chilli and drizzled with lime juice (sensational with quail, duck, chicken, scallops, prawns, crayfish – you could also add shredded kaffir lime leaves or lemon leaves), or served on fried or barbecued fish fillets with a sprinkling of capers and marjoram. Do you know, once you hop out of the square (peach as a fruit, in a bottle, as a chutney, or a la Maryland), the possibilities are positively thrilling. Just think… a pan of sizzling peaches poured over a salad of buttercrunch and rocket leaves, splashed with tarragon vinegar and crowned with a handful of toasted salted almonds…I just can’t wait to go and try it!