Cooking With Mollie #5: Roasted Red Peppers with Garlic and Lime

I had this recipe done a couple of days ago and I had to keep holding myself back from posting it. It is so good I wanted to share it immediately. If I had your phone numbers, I would have called you all and told you about it.

I present, from Mollie Katzen's genius cookbook "The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without" (yes, I'm going to keep linking it up every day. It's genius, and don't you think I owe her at least that for the joy she gives me?)

Roasted Red Peppers Marinated With Garlic And Lime (yay, Mollie has the actual recipe online).

Could not be simpler. Mollie calls for four red peppers. I had a yellow and a red, so I forged ahead and made adjustments, as we do.

You roast them in a 400 degree oven on a lightly oiled baking sheet, flipping them every 8 minutes or so, until they look like this, maybe 20-30 minutes: You put them in the bowl, put a plate on as a lid, a technique I thought I had invented, but Mollie knew it too. A lot of skinning peppers techniques say to put them in a plastic or paper bag, but hello! 1) Weird hot plastic chemicals and 2) these things leak liquid, so ooh, gross. Bowl. Plate. Trust me and Mollie on this one.

You let them steam in the bowl while you do something else. Then you come back and peel and scrape the skins off with a sharp knife and messily deseed and de-stem them. Chop or slice into rajas (hey, Spanish! But they have a word for "strips of peppers" and we don't. So "rajas") as you wish.

Chop. Drizzle with olive oil, a little chopped garlic, salt and pepper. This is where I would normally stop. But NOW the magic Mollie moment: LIME JUICE.

Lime juice. I would have never thought of that in a million years and yet once you do it, it seems so obvious. The acid perks up the flavor and adds a happy little note of brightness.

I have a secret for you: you could do this with rinsed roasted peppers from a jar. Don't tell your guests.

I ate mine on sprouted wheat toast with jalapeno goat cheese. Pretty dang good. Make this. Eat it. Enjoy.