Pimientos de Padron

Back in the summer my girlfriend introduced me to tapas, and in particular, the small sweet Pimientos de Padron peppers.  Her father is from the Galicia region of Spain, home to the town of Padron and this fantastic tapas dish.

Pimientos de Padron, December 2011

The peppers are picked before they fully ripen and cooked in olive oil with coarse salt. As we discovered, it's worth having a lid on the frying pan when you do this as the scalding oil has a tendency to spit everywhere.  Pat them dry with paper towel and serve hot. You eat the pepper in its entirety, just discarding the stalk.

When you taste them they're mild but about 10% have a kick.  Not enough to blow your head off but certainly hot enough to provide amusement to your fellow diners.  At our tapas party it became a game of Spanish Roulette, waiting to see if anyone had a hot one.

Subsequently I picked up a few packets of seed and although it was the wrong end of the season I planted them and just to see how successful I would be.  The answer was pretty good actually.  Of 36 seeds planted I had 30 come up.  They were robust little seeding and I didn't loose any to damping off.  I put this success down to the fish-tank propagator I use.

All of my seeds are germinated in propagators on top of the aquarium and the constant heat from the lights warms the compost and ensures a good success rate. By comparison, an identical batch germinated in a conservatory had only two survivors, I think the extremes of temperature from day to night probably did the damage.

October 2011

So that was back in september, the plants were later moved over to the windowsill and then about half were transported into work where, with a south-west facing window and a nice warm office they've flourished.  For the Christmas break they've been moved back home so that they don't suffer when the heating at work is shut off which means I'm very short on windowsill space.

On the windowsill at work, November 2011

The average plant is now about 15" tall, most have some flowers on the way and two are already bearing fruit.  I don't suppose I'll have enough for a full tapas dish but it's early days yet.

The flower of the Padron

Pimientos de Padron, December 2011