Recipe for "pepper-roast"

NAME

     PEPPER-ROAST - A low-calorie but flavorful red pepper salad
     Safeway got in their  first  carload  of  really  cheap  red
     peppers yesterday, and I made roasted pepper salad.
     Serve this at room temperature as a side dish  for  anything
     Nicoise  or  Spanish or Greek or Egyptian. Or make a meal of
     them by adding a bowl of yoghurt, a bowl of  chopped  onion,
     some  black  olives,  radishes,  and pistachios, and lots of
     warm pita bread.  Or use it with sauteed garlic  and  pitted
     black  olives and a little reduced white wine as a spaghetti
     sauce.

INGREDIENTS (Serves 4)

     500 g     fresh red peppers (sweet red capsicum peppers)
     50 ml     lemon juice
               salt

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Preheat broiler as hot as you can  get  it.   Turn
               red  peppers  under  the broiler until their skins
               come up in black bubbles.  Cool the peppers  until
               you can handle them comfortably.
          (2)  Remove the skins, stems, cores, and seeds.   (This
               is  messy work.  I have tried removing the innards
               first,  before  putting  the  peppers  under   the
               broiler,  and  the  result  is not so good as this
               way.)
          (3)  Cut the peppers into finger shapes.   Flavor  them
               with fresh lemon juice and salt.
          (4)  Let them sit for several hours, draining  off  the
               liquid that forms.

NOTES

     Now.  Here is the  real  point  about  this  recipe:   These
     roasted  peppers are insanely delicious, smooth and unctuous
     and aromatic, and yet they contain absolutely  no  calories.
     A full-sized red pepper is only 15 calories.
     Of course I could lose weight if I never ate more than three
     tablespoons  of  anything.   Any  fool could do that.  But I
     don't want to confine myself to three tablespoons.   Perhaps
     my  tastebuds work more slowly that other people's.  I don't
     seem to get the hang of what  I'm  eating  till  the  second
     serving, or sometimes the third.
     At the same time, I want things that are  really  voluptuous
     and  good  to  eat, full of interesting, complicated flavors
     that will satisfy me and make me feel  happy  and  rewarded.
     Again,  any  fool  could lose weight by eating celery stalks
     and carrots.  Unfortunately, any  number  of  carrot  sticks
     over  six  makes  me grumpish, and raw celery turns me posi-
     tively surly in short order unless accompanied by delicious,
     fattening sour cream and cream cheese.

RATING

     Difficulty: easy.  Time:  15  minutes  preparation,  several
     hours aging.  Precision: no need to measure.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Mary-Claire van Leunen
     DEC Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, California, USA
     mcvl@src.dec.com    -or- decwrl!decsrc!mcvl