Basque Pintxo Piquillo Peppers Stuffed With Bonito Recipe
by Nicola Lando
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15 minutes prep time
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0 minutes cook time
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Easy
Stuffed piquillo peppers are one of the most typical pintxos of the Basque Country. The best hand-picked and roasted piquillo peppers come from Lodosa, a small town near Pamplona famed for its 'little beak' peppers.
Piquillo peppers are most commonly stuffed with black pudding, crab or bonito, a species of tuna prized for its lighter coloured flesh and richer flavour.
We chose Ortiz bonito tuna for our stuffed piquillo peppers recipe, mixing it with finely chopped shallot, a tiny dollop of mayonnaise and plenty of lemon juice and seasoning.
The smoky, char-grilled flavour of the piquillos with the fresh, marine taste of the bonito and the crunchy bread it is served on make for a simple but winning combination.
Ingredients Serves: 6
- 1 shallot
- 2 x 160g Ortiz bonito
- 4 tsp mayonnaise (if you're making the dish gluten free, use homemade or a gluten free brand)
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1 jar piquillo peppers
- Crusty bread (or toasted gluten-free bread)
- Canape skewers
Method
- Finely chop the shallot.
- Drain the bonito.
- Mix together the shallot, bonito/tuna, mayonnaise and lemon juice in a bowl using a fork.
- Drain the piquillo peppers and stuff them with the mixture using a teaspoon. Use the end of the teaspoon to push the bonito down to the very end of the piquillo pepper.
- Present the stuffed peppers on crusty bread (or toasted gluten free bread), secured with a bamboo looped skewer.
About the author
Nicola Lando is the co-founder and CEO of Sous Chef, where she has spent more than a decade sourcing, tasting and selecting specialist ingredients, cookware and tableware from producers around the world.
She trained at Leiths and later completed a stage at a Michelin-starred London restaurant, experiences that helped shape Sous Chef’s original mission: to give home cooks access to the same exceptional ingredients used by professional chefs.
Today, Nicola leads much of Sous Chef’s product sourcing and ingredient selection, working directly with producers and travelling internationally to food fairs, farms, mills and manufacturers. She tastes thousands of products each year and has built deep expertise across storecupboard ingredients, olive oil, condiments, spices, preserved foods and specialist cooking ingredients.
She holds an olive oil sommelier certification from ESAO in Spain, Imperial Executive Education’s Certificate in Nutrition for Health: Evidence-Based Tools and Strategies certificate; as well as studying Food Safety and Control at University of Greenwich.
Nicola also writes recipes and ingredient guides for Sous Chef, combining practical cooking experience with first-hand knowledge from producers, suppliers and specialist food makers. Her work focuses on helping cooks understand how to choose better ingredients, use them well, and get more flavour from their cooking.
