Pipérade

Before You Start

Cook the vegetables until the pan is dry.

Eggs off the heat. Back on the flame and they curdle.

Serve it slightly looser than looks right — it keeps setting.

Making Pipérade

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1. Cook the onions and peppers in the oil over medium heat for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and collapsing.

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2. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes.

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3. Add the tomatoes, Espelette and salt and cook a further 15 minutes, until there is no free liquid in the pan at all.

   Mark done

4. Beat the eggs with the 0.5 tsp salt.

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5. Take the pan off the heat completely and wait 30 seconds.

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6. Pour the eggs in and stir slowly and constantly with a wooden spoon. The residual heat will set them into soft curds in about a minute.

   Mark done

7. While it is still slightly loose, spoon onto plates, lay the ham (optional) alongside, and serve with bread (optional).

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Related guide: Ingredient substitutions.

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What's Going On Here

The vegetables are cooked down for a full forty minutes until there is no liquid left at all, and the eggs are stirred in off the heat. A wet pepper base plus eggs gives you scrambled eggs in a puddle; a properly reduced one binds with the egg into something closer to a loose omelette. The residual heat of the pan is enough to set the eggs — put it back on the flame and they curdle in seconds.

After You've Cooked It

The pepper base keeps 4 days refrigerated and freezes for 3 months. Add eggs to order.

Ingredient Swaps

• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

What to Serve Alongside

• Bayonne ham
• Country bread
• A glass of Irouléguy

Pipérade Nutrition

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Vegetarian when served without the bayonne ham. Gluten-free when served without the country bread.

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