Blistered Hot Peppers

Gentle reader, a large part of the reason that Brooklyn Girls Cooking exists is that for Brooklyn girls, going out to eat is highly overpriced and annoying.

Every. Single. Restaurant has an appetizer selection that will set you back like $10 for some artisanal pickles or a single deviled egg or blistered shiseido peppers. And don’t get me started on the hour-long wait times, which occur in large part because people have to tweet and Instagram their food before they start eating it. Okay, fine, I do that too, but I do it at home with things I’ve cooked. That was my whole point.

Well, anyway. I was recently gifted with a pack of peppers (which purported, per the package, to be “serruno,” which may or may not have meant “serrano”), and tossed them with kosher salt and olive oil on a foil-lined baking sheet and roasted them at 400° until the skins cracked and got charred in spots. In other words, blistered.

You could do these with the standard shiseido or with jalapenos. You can eat them as is, perhaps with some sort of dipping sauce, or you can peel the skins, de-seed them, and store the resulting strips (no need to cut, they just kind of tear apart in your hands) in a jar with olive oil. Make sure the oil fully covers the peppers and they’ll keep for weeks.

Then go out to a restaurant, wait in line for an hour, and treat yourself to a $10 deviled egg. You’ve earned it.