Piperade as a pizza sauce?

[Mike Nolan]

I just made a big batch of piperade (onions, sweet peppers and tomatoes) for my eggplant/zucchini lasagna, and it occurs to me that it might make a good pizza sauce.

Anybody ever seen a recommendation for that before?

Spread the word

      

  

  

[chocomouse]

Mike, that is what I make from my garden harvest - tomatoes, sweet red and/or green peppers, and onions. I'd never heard it called piperade. I freeze it plain, and add whatever seasonings depending on how I will use it -- garlic, oregano, basil, paprika, chipotle peppers, etc. It turns into marinara, "spaghetti sauce", soup, pizza sauce, salsa. I prefer to freeze rather than can the tomatoes, and I have plenty of peppers and onions ready to harvest at the same time so I add them to it now instead of needing a separate supply in the freezer or fridge year-round.

[BakerAunt]

When I freeze tomatoes, I cook them with a bit of olive oil and some minced garlic. If I plan to use it as sauce, I do not cook it until it is moderately thick. If I plan to use it for pizza sauce, I cook as much water out of it as I can. I have to forgo the onion in deference to my husband. As for the red bell peppers, I have plenty of uses for that crop without freezing, or perhaps I should say, we cannot fit enough pepper plants into the garden!

[Mike Nolan]

I have terrible luck growing bell peppers, snap beans or cucumbers. Maybe next year I'll try starting some bell peppers inside, that worked very well for the eggplant.

I picked about 10 pounds of eggplants the other day, used a third of them in my lasagna and gave the rest away to two friends. There's still a lot of eggplant left on the plants and they are still blooming, though I'm not sure if they are still setting fruit.

Here's the Wiki entry on piperade, I also posted it in another thread:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperade

[RiversideLen]

That sounds real good to me, Mike.

Try adding a little Epson salts to the soil for your peppers, I've been doing that for a couple of years for my peppers and tomatoes. There are some youtube videos that explain it.

[Mike Nolan]

I thought I remembered reading in the Master Gardener literature that my wife has that they recommend against Epsom salt for tomatoes unless your soil tests show you need magnesium and sulfur, which is not common.

As this page indicates, adding Epsom salt can increase blossom end rot, because too much magnesium can limit calcium absorption.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/lifestyle/ask-a-master-gardener-dont-use-epsom-salt-on-tomato-plants

We had a lot of blossom end rot two years ago, but I added a lot of calcium and I've only seen one instance of it so far this year.

[RiversideLen]

I have had problems with blossom end rot in previous years, but hardly any last year and none at all this year. One thing I have also done in the past couple of years is to save egg shells, run them through the blender until they are a powder, and mix that in with the soil when planting. I cook the shells first as I do not want to add any harmful bacteria. I've added a tablespoon or so of Epsom salts to the soil a couple times during the growing season. I have had zero blossom end rot so far. My Mountain Magic tomatoes have been perfect. My beefsteaks are still green, but should start ripening soon, so I'll see. My peppers have been great. Some years ago it was actually a farmer at the farmers market who suggested that I should add a little Epsom salts to the peppers.

[Mike Nolan]

When I put my plants in the ground, I make sure they have some fertilizer, I've been using Osmocote, it seems to be working OK for me, with the occasional calcium additions. I left the landscape cloth in place this spring, the previous year I pulled it up, tilled in several bags of peat moss, one bag of gypsum and one of bone meal and put the landscape cloth back down again. Next year I'll probably do that again, though the landscape cloth might need to be replaced by next spring.

We had a problem with tomatoes a few years ago that we thought might have been nematodes and/or cutworms, so I seeded the usual garden area in alfalfa and buckwheat for two years, then tilled that all in. I grew a few tomatoes in another area of the yard, most did reasonably well, but I didn't have space for all 24 cages. I went back to putting tomatoes in the primary garden spot 3 or 4 years ago.

I'm tempted to find another area of the yard to seed in buckwheat, it is really pretty when it blooms and the bees just LOVE it.

Our front yard is a mess, the heat a few years ago killed off a lot of the grass, probably because we didn't water it enough. (We did not put in a sprinkler system when we built the house, though there's a water line to the front corner of the house for that purpose.)

I'm thinking of putting in buffalo grass, a low-water native grass that one of the professors in my wife's department has been promoting; we've tried reseeding with fescue twice, neither took, don't know if it was bad seed or something else. What mostly came up was what my iPhone says is St. Augustine grass, which many northern gardeners consider a weed, though it is grown in the South, and it doesn't look too bad if you keep it short.

I wonder what a front yard of buckwheat would be like and what the neighbors and city would think of it? The listings say it isn't very drought tolerant, though. I may start using it to fill in some areas in the back where the grass won't grow, it is supposed to be a good cover crop for bare soil.

I should probably move this post to the gardens thread. :sigh:

[aaronatthedoublef]

I've never seen piperade before. It seems like, as Choco says, it would be good any place you used tomato sauce. When we make our own we also try to sneak in some spinach just to get some into our kids.

Peppers and onions (usually sweet sometimes hot) are pretty common here with Italian sausage. Fry the all together. Standard fare outside Fenway before a Red Sox game. Tomatoes would be good addition to that.

[BakerAunt]

My husband has only had success with red bell peppers if he starts plants in pots the previous spring, overwinters them on the enclosed porch, which is cool. They look like they have died back, but he keeps them watered, then when it is warm enough the NEXT spring, he plants them out. We like our bell peppers red, so we start getting some about mid-summer.

[Mike Nolan]

I like to mix spinach with ricotta cheese in things like Chicago stuffed pizza and lasagna.

We prefer our sweet peppers after they've turned red, too. I've tried growing yellow and orange peppers, not much luck with them, either. I've seen purple ones at the farmer's market, haven't really looked for them as plants or seeds. The guides say bell peppers are perennial plants in warmer climates, I don't have a covered porch I could over-winter them on. If I could redo one thing of our house design, I'd probably have added a solarium, possible in front of the garage or in front of the first floor guest bedroom. With a south-facing house, the back yard is not sunny enough for a standalone greenhouse, except perhaps where the vegetable garden is.

My son was growing poblano peppers in one of his Aerogardens, it looked like he was getting a nice crop of them. They're a little strong for us.

[BakerAunt]

Our enclosed porch does not allow in the correct light frequency for plants, nor does it allow in heat--a bitter disappointment to my husband. (We do have a heating vent out there.) The first time we overwintered a bell pepper plant, I was sure it was dead, with its over wintered 2 small green peppers. It was amazing when my husband planted it in the garden again, and the little peppers grew and turned red, and it produced lots of red bell peppers.

[chocomouse]

As a certified Master Gardener, I'm not allowed to promote the use of a product for gardening if it was not intended for that purpose. However, I will say that I use about a tablespoon of Epsom Salts scratched into the soil around my pepper and tomato plants when they blossom. I do this only every couple of years, and I've never had a problem with blossom end rot.

I should add that I do not use any commercial/chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides -- only the compost I make.

[chocomouse]

Len, we often have that Fenway tailgate food here, in a bun. And one of my favorite pasta dishes is hot Italian sausage, sliced, with bite sized chunks of onions and red and green peppers, in a tomato sauce.

[Author]

Posts