This salad hits all the marks. The end of the summer provides amazing bell peppers, and roasting them brings out a sweetness. The roasted peppers combined with the sharpness of the apple cider vinegar, and the pungency of the pecorino cheese is a true delight. 
[Music] Hey guys, welcome to the very first episode of Grace and Gravy. I’m so excited. I cannot wait to start this journey with you guys. I have so many great things planned. We’re going to have delicious recipes that are budget friendly, all pantry staples. We’re going to be sharing some faith-based and inspirational stories and some scripture that inspires me and inspires my cooking. So, from my South Philly kitchen to yours, welcome to Grace and Gravy. So, my first episode is going to be a delicious roasted red pepper salad. You’re going to need two heads of romaine hearts or one large head of regular romaine lettuce, two red bell peppers, extra virgin olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, and pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, which is optional, oregano, dried oregano, not optional, a half of a red onion, and some pecarino Romano cheese. So, one of the reasons that I chose this recipe is because bell peppers are so magnificent towards the end of the season. You’ll know that mid August to the end of September are like the perfect peppers for roasting, canning, or freezing. But these peppers, the ones that have been sitting, you know, on the vine a little too long, they have not perfect exteriors. They might feel a little soft. These are the perfect peppers to roast over an open flame. So, the only thing you have to do to prep the peppers is just wash them really well. And then you want to make sure that they are completely dried off with a paper towel. There should be no moisture whatsoever left on the peppers. The reason being when you’re roasting something, especially over an open flame or high heat, what’ll happen is any moisture left on the skin will actually start to steam the skin. And we don’t want that. happen. We want direct contact with the flame. We want that black blistered skin so that it really roasts underneath and releases all of those sweet pepper juices. So, I’m going to be roasting these over an open flame. I’m doing it right on my gas stove. If you don’t have a gas stove and you have an electric stove, you can do this in the oven. You’re going to rub it with extra virgin olive oil. oven on 400°, little salt and pepper, and then stand them up in the pan and let them roast standing up. Once you see the skin start to blacken and blister and the pepper start to collapse a little bit, you know that it’s ready. So, let’s just get the flame going here. And you want to put it on high heat. And we’re just going to drop the peppers right over the open flame. You can instantly hear the the skin start to blister like snap, crackle, pop. Snap, crackle, pop. We’re going to rotate them. Make sure all of the skin is black and like charcoal. All right, let’s give them a little rotation. We get Oh, yeah. Look at that. That’s what we’re looking for. And you want to make sure that you roast all sides of the peppers, even the tops and bottom. These are really, really starting to look amazing. And you just continue to rotate. And any spots that look like they’re not completely blackened, you just adjust adjust it and make sure like that side needs a little bit. So, I’ll put that directly over the flame. You just want as much of the skin to be charcoal as black as possible. So, this is just ready to come off. Look at that. It’s charred all the way around. Put it in. Leave the lid on. That looks great. So, we’re going to throw him in there with his buddy. Put the lid on. And we’re going to let this sit for about 20 minutes covered. Don’t touch it. We want all of that charcoal to be easy to peel off and it’s going to separate as it steams. Okay. So, my peppers have been steaming for about 15 20 minutes. So, we’re going to take the lid off. And you’ll notice some juice will have collected in the bottom of the bowl. You want to save all that juice. Oh, yeah. That’s good stuff. So the skin is just literally gonna slide right off. I mean it no effort at all. I can just tell by the way that they feel in my hands that they’re going to be so sweet and flavorful. So now that we have our peppers peeled, there’s some juice in the bottom. Leave that there. That’s flavor. We’re just going to slice them into thin strips. So, you could just kind of like rotate it around the core like this. Add a little baby pepper in there. I love when there’s like a little baby pepper within the pepper. God’s so cool. So, now that we’ve gone through the whole process of roasting the peppers, and you saw them get completely charred and black, once we peeled the skin away, it just almost gave new life to the pepper. That brings me to the scripture for today’s episode. Isaiah 43:2. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up. The flames will not consume you. So that’s kind of like what happens with us, like exactly what happened to the pepper, like oppression, bad things. Even though the fire burns a little bit, it’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to stop you. You just peel away the burnt layers and then you’re made a new. And that’s just such a beautiful thing like that Christ love can do that for us. And it’s actually one of my personal favorite verses, which is why I chose it for this episode. You can walk through the fire of oppression, but you will not be consumed by the flames. Trust me. Trust me. So, now we’re going to just take the peppers and just cut them in nice slices. It’s just the peppers, they have like a little bit of of texture still left to them. And you can see I’m just kind of putting them in thin strips right in the bowl with all those pepper juices. So, I have all of the pepper slices in the bowl. Now we’re going to season them. A nice gug of extra virgin olive oil. I would say about two tablespoons. Pinch of salt. Start with about a half a teaspoon and then build from there. Some regular black pepper. Now this is optional. Some hot pepper seeds. And this is not optional. Dried oregano. You’re going to use about a teaspoon. You’re going to add about two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar. And then you’re just going to get in there with your hands and massage that all into the peppers. Smells incredible. So once the peppers are all nicely coated, we’re just going to set that off to the side while we build the rest of the salad. So ideally, you want to let the peppers marinate as long as possible. So if you plan on making this for dinner, maybe roast your peppers in the morning and just let them sit at room temperature covered and just let them soak up all that flavor. Now, the next thing that I want to put in is some sliced half moon red onion. This is like essential for this salad. So, I’m just going to do maybe like eighth of an inch half moon slices. That’s good. And then I’m going to put these into the bowl with the peppers. And I’m going to give it a good mix so that all that onion flavor will now also fuse into this olive oil. And the vinegar will help and the salt will help to start break down the onions a little bit as well. So, the next thing you want to do is cut up your romaine. And there is all our remain ready to go in our salad bowl. So, this probably seems like, “Oh my gosh, how are you going to get that all in there?” Trust me, once you add it, it starts to break down. You’ll see. It’s It’s a process, this salad. So, we’re going to start out with that much. And we’re just going to start tossing it around until that remain starts to break down a little bit. And there’ll be room in the bowl to add some more. Anybody that’s had a Nona Sunday dinner salad knows what I’m talking about. When the dressing soaks into the lettuce, come on. And once I see all of the lettuce have that glistening of like that olive oil coating, then I’m going to test for salt, pepper and maybe add a little bit more olive oil and a little bit more apple cider vinegar. You’re going to alter this according to your taste. Now that everything sort of has that sheen on it, I’m going to grab a little piece of lettuce. And yeah, it definitely needs more salt, little bit more pepper, maybe a teaspoon of olive oil, and I prefer vinegar. I’m going to add like two teaspoons more. Okay, so I have adjusted the seasonings. I’m going to give it one more quick little taste. That’s it. That’s the mummy. For this amount of salad, I would do a/4 to a half a cup of the pecarino cheese. And then just mix it in. Every single solitary millimeter of this salad is coated in flavor. Let’s give it a real taste now. Let’s taste it. So, I’m just going to make sure I get a little bit of everything. The onions, the roasted peppers. All right. I got some pepper. I got some lettuce. I got some cheese. Are you kidding me? I will literally eat this whole bowl. The flavor of salad will literally knock your socks off. Like if if this isn’t your new favorite salad, then you just don’t love salad. The Roma wilted down, the combination of those sweet roasted peppers with the sharpness and the pungency of the pecarino cheese, the extra virgin olive oil, the oregano. It’s the perfect perfect salad. Guys, thank you so much for joining me for the first episode of Grace and Gravy. I hope that I taught you something today as well as a new recipe and I hope that you got something out of the scripture and I hope that it inspires you to open up your Bible or maybe download the Bible app and just follow a scripture a day. Like to close with a prayer. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak and share my food with all of these people. I’m just so blessed that you’ve given me the gift of culinary arts and I just ask that you reach your hand out to everyone that’s watching and just send them continued blessings and let them know that you are an awesome God and that following you is the way to true salvation in Jesus name. Amen. Don’t forget to like, share, subscribe, follow, get email notifications, whatever you have to do. You do not want to miss the next episode. [Music]
Dining and Cooking