Alright, my favorite Spanish Tapas plate is the stuffed piquillo pepper and that’s it; piquillo. Alright, you got to get the exact rarity and when you buy them, make sure you look through the jar, make sure they are all whole, there’s no tears, there’s nice triangular shape. They have a very specific shape, the piquillo’s type of pimento actually. That was some goat cheese, we get eight ounces of just regular plain old goat cheese, one orange and some ground cumin.
Alright now, the stuffing for this pepper is very simple yet incredibly exotic and delicious. We’re going to take some orange zest. I am going to do—and again, you got to go on these zesters, it could be—I’ve told you before about those. I did about five drags down the orange and when I dice that—I’m sorry not dice; mince. When I minced that up, you can have about a teaspoon minced and again with any zest, you really got to mince it fine. So, just keep mincing until it just almost disappears and throw that onto your softened goat cheese, alright.
Next, we are going to take about a teaspoon of our nice ground cumin. Again, get a high quality, expensive variety, amazing taste of that—if you’re having covered for 14 years. So, just about a teaspoon of that, that really does give it a real exotic kind of smoky accent. And just to thin this just a hair, I’m going to juice in not even half an orange. I didn’t squeeze it all the way. I want about a tablespoon, two tablespoon and a half of orange juice, alright, just a little hint. That was a couple grounds of black pepper and just a pinch of salt, maybe a half a teaspoon of salt and that is the stuffing for these peppers.
Now, these piquillo’s are so amazingly flavorful. You don’t really need a lot to happen with the stuffing. Now, once you take your spatula, I want to give that a really good mix. Number one, you got to mix all that zest in nice and evenly, alright, all your spices are nice and evenly. And you’re also making it nice and soft so it pipes very easily. Now speaking of piping, I think I have a piping bag somewhere in my kitchen but I don’t know where it is because I never use it because I always just use the old Zip Lock bag trick.
I know you’ve probably seen this on TV for if not, welcome to a great, great technique. Take your softened goat cheese, alright. Add it to a heavy duty Zip Lock bag. Now, get the name brand all right, stay away from the Dollar Stores, Zip Lock bags, it’s okay for some stuff but we’re doing a—we’re going to squeeze cheese out of something, you want the heavy duty nice freezer bag. All right, pull up the sides and then what you want, is you want just kind of shake that and smoosh that and rub that down into one of the corners. And you basically just made—so we’re going to sniff off that little tip and you’ve made yourself a nice and instant piping bag. When you’re done, you throw it away; no fuss, no mass, very nice.
And there is our just—man, those are beautiful, they’re beautiful Spanish piquillo pepper. You’re going to get about a dozen, maybe 10 out of one of those eight ounce jars. They feel really nice. They taste even better, okay. So, let’s stuff these and that’s a very simple process. Now a couple of things here, you’re going to take your piping bag also known as Zip Lock freezer bag. I just cut off the bottom half inch there, alright and it gets kind of soften up to squeeze. And if it’s too cold, let it come to room temperature as you can have real hard time here. Open it up. Now, don’t pipe all the way up, squeezing about a tablespoon and a half, maybe a tablespoon, you want to go about half way to two-thirds of the way up. See I want to be able—oops, let me taste a little bit there, it fell down. What you want to do is just squeeze the top and it will seal. See I want the cheese to be invisible, I want it to be like a surprise like hmm, what’s in those? Ahh, orange, cumin, scented goat cheese, interesting.
So, there is one stuff piquillo pepper. These are so sexy and delicious and I’ve never served this to people who wouldn’t like. Oh my God that’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. So again, when you squeeze it in, don’t go all the way to the top, alright. Make sure you give yourself enough room to fold it like that into a nice little package. Alright, so I did the rest of those. I didn’t bore you with watching me stuff all those. And when I was done, I put it on a beautiful Spanish plate made in China and I drizzle down some of my salsa verde, that’s an almond and parsley sauce, little garlic so delicious on this, very traditional. I am going to show you how to make that in another demo but that I think is just such a spectacular appetizer. There is nothing like the flavor of a piquillo pepper. It is roasted over fire, okay. They peel it over a wood fire, it was very specific variety as Spanish pepper. It has just a deep sweet amazing flavor. Not hard to find, okay, you know you could find it on the site, it will be at that specialty at gourmet shop in the roasted pepper section. I threw a couple almonds on there because my sauce at almonds.
Again, I love tapas. They are one of my favorite types of food. I hope you give this a try and enjoy.
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