Rachel Roddy’s recipe for friggitelli peppers with tomatoes | A Kitchen in Rome

These small, finger-length peppers are sensational fried in olive oil and sprinkled with a little salt, or drowned in a ripe, garlicky tomato sauce

Friggitelli are small, elongated and slightly crumpled sweet peppers, and it is their season. While classed as sweet to reassure us that the hot gene is recessed, friggitelli peppers are, in fact, not sweet at all. Rather they are the David Byrne of vegetables: intensely savoury with thin, crisp flesh and, while there is no searing heat or spice, they have something ever-so-slightly piquant about them – the so-called trigeminal effect some ingredients cause, which, in this case, is a cooling in your mouth. Friggitelli also don’t suffer the unripe flavour of many green bell peppers, but have a sure, vegetal tone.

Two hours down the coast from Rome in Naples, friggitelli are called friarelli, which is confusing as it is one letter away from friarielli, the local name for cime di rapa, or turnip tops (which, to add another layer of etymological confusion, are called broccoletti in Rome, even though they have nothing to do with the broccoli family). Peperoni friarelli, however, are part of the capsicum genus; members of the nightshade family; bright migrants from Mesoamerica to Europe in the 1400s. The word friarello derives from the Neapolitan dialect, che si frigge (meaning “that is fried”); three of the finest words reminding us in no uncertain terms of the best way to cook them.

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