Eat this! Pepper and Salami Tart

Last night I invited the whole neighborhood (eight people– don’t get too impressed) to supper in my garden. I made a huge bowl of spaghetti with mussels, an American style mixed salad with Gorgonzola dressing, great Pugliese bread and this tart, which is meant to serve four, but stretched to eight with all that other food. What can I say? It was delicious! I got the recipe from a magazine called “Sale e Pepe”, and there are four or five more to try. I hope to do all of them.

This is not a great photo, I know, but by the time this tart came out of the oven I was feeling very rushed and was hasty in putting away the camera before taking enough shots to be sure one would be good. Sorry.

This was easy as pie– well it is pie. The magazine said to buy readymade bread dough or pizza dough for the crust and I did, but because it cooked 40 minutes at 400°F, the edges were way overcooked and even a hungry cat couldnt manage them. So I say cover the edges with foil so they’ll be cuttable and chewable. Otherwise, this recipe is a really good one. I’ll certainly make it again. I am only translating it here. It was fine just as it was. I might make my own dough next time, but only because it is really easy to make, yeah?

Pepper and Salami Tart

preheat the oven to 200°C or 400°F

pizza or bread dough, rolled out to line a 9″ pie tin or cake tin. I used a layer cake pan, and I lined it first with the parchment or oven paper that came with the pizza dough. That was a really good idea, because this is not easy to cut, even with the paper!

Fold over the edge and crimp as shown.

3-4 red peppers, depending on size, roasted or grilled to scorch the skin, then rested and peeled.

80 g or 3 ounces of piquant salami or peperoni, cut into squares

1 clove garlic, creamed by using a knife and salt– will explain

1 heaped tablespoon capers, minced

1 tablespoon dried oregano
3 eggs, beaten

200 ml or 6.75 fl ounces tomato juice or passata di pomodoro

pinch of cayenne or peperoncino in polvere

First scorch or bake the red peppers as you prefer to do so that the skin will come off easily after a few minutes of rest in a paper sack. It astounds me that Italian recipes mention paper sacks, but they are really hard to come by here. Plastic, yes, paper rarely. Anyway, do your best, then peel the peppers, remove the innards, then cut into slices with your knife.

Then stack up the salami or peperoni and cut into squares with that knife.

Next, cream the garlic. If you haven’t done this before, don’t neglect learning, because it is a very useful technique for getting the flavor of garlic through something smooth. Peel the garlic and chop a bit. Dump a spoonful of salt over it, then using the side of the knife blade, scrape across it many times so that the abrasive salt turns the garlic into a cream. The salt gradually disappears. Done. If you then whisk some olive oil into it, it will dress a powerful country salad!

Next mince those capers. You can use those from a bottle very handily. Break the 3 eggs into a medium sized bowl, add the tomato juice/passata and the cayenne pepper and whisk together until smooth. Add the garlic, oregano and capers and stir in well, then the cooked pepper strips and squares of salami, just stirring in.

Pour this into the lined pan, cover the edges with aluminum foil, then cook it in the oven for 40 minutes. When it was 15 minutes from being done, I added 3 slices of salami, folded over, as a garnish. That looked good, but made it harder to cut.

This was so delicious, I think I will make one of the other tarts from the article today. Everybody liked it, from the thirteen year old to the seventy-six year olds. One British guest thought it was as spicy as she cares to eat, but I thought it was hardly spicy at all.

I would serve this to 8 for antipasto or 4 for a main dish at lunch or supper. I would even eat it four days if there was no one to share it. Yum!