Food Sleuth: Preserved Peppers Punch Up Winter Dishes

By Melinda Hemmelgarn

Columbia Daily Tribune

January 30, 2008

Available online at: http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jan/20080130Food009.asp

Mike McGowan warned me not to look at seed catalogues when I’m hungry. Similar to grocery shopping, we tend to purchase more on an empty stomach.

Apparently he didn’t take his own advice. I just received his mouth-watering list of the 34 pepper varieties he plans to grow for the Columbia Farmers Market next summer. There are brown-skinned "Chocolate" peppers, "Holy Mole," "Czech Black," "Ancho," "Cayenne," "Cuban," "Golden Treasure," "Sheepnose Pimento," "Yummy" and more. Many more.

Some varieties are best suited for frying, others for drying, and some taste best fresh out of hand. They range from hot to warm, mild and sweet, with varying levels of smokiness, citrus and spice.

When I asked why he grew so many varieties, McGowan replied, "I like introducing people to all the wonderful colors and shapes and tastes they never knew existed, even though many of these varieties have been around over a hundred years. They taste good, look pretty, I like to eat them and people like to buy them."

But McGowan brings more than a pretty peck of peppers to market. He’s promoting and supporting biological diversity, which helps protect against disease and widespread crop loss. Plus, each variety rewards eaters with distinctive degrees of flavor and unique health properties.

Like many local farmers, McGowan’s been thumbing through seed catalogues that cover his kitchen table. They’re chock-full of page after tempting page of promising produce - otherwise known as preventive medicine. If you subscribe to the teachings of Hippocrates, the Greek physician who described food as our first medicine, farmers are our finest pharmacists.

McGowan won’t sell any peppers green "because they taste sweeter and look better after they color up," he said.

Nutritionally, there’s a significant difference between unripe green and ripe red peppers. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one medium green bell pepper contains 440 international units of vitamin A and 95 milligrams of vitamin C. When red, the pepper’s vitamin A content shoots up to 3,725 international units, and its vitamin C climbs to 226 milligrams.

Thanks to a little planning, I’ve been savoring the flavor of almost-as-good-as-fresh peppers even on these cold, blustery January days.

My secret? My freezer. Last fall I purchased a few extra pounds to slice, dice and stash in cold storage. The quick and easy process - wash, dry, cut into strips and rings, then freeze - yields ready-as-needed handfuls of ruby-red heaven. Sturdy food-grade freezer storage bags keep damage from oxygen and resulting "freezer burn" to a minimum.

There’s hardly an entrée that isn’t enhanced with a peppery punch. For example, my pepper slices joined red onion, garlic and a splash of olive oil for a quick sauté. Minutes later, they were sitting on top of a homemade pizza. They’re equally delicious with steamy whole-wheat pasta or mixed with beans and cheese for quick quesadillas. Sautéed peppers wake up otherwise lackluster omelets, too. We’re talking about real fast food that’s worth eating.

Simple food preservation techniques allow us to extend the pleasures of the harvest season and skip the tasteless red peppers typically imported from Holland and Mexico found lurking in supermarkets during the dead of winter. Those imposters can’t hold a candle to the pungent flavor and fragrance only homegrown peppers deliver.

My advice: Prepare for next winter now. Start thinking about where you’ll plant your garden, and escape from winter in the pages of a seed catalogue. Whatever your garden can’t produce, our local farmers will gladly supply. McGowan says he planted about five to six 100-foot rows of peppers last year. This year, he plans to double or triple that with the addition of hot peppers and new varieties he simply can’t resist.