Pipérade with Poached Eggs

So due to my overzealous behavior at the Co-Op's deli counter Friday evening, we had a bit of pancetta left over after building the Pasta e Fagioli last night. Meg searched around for a good recipe to use it up as part of our Sunday Brunch program. She stumbled on this recipe for something called Pipérade. She also found that Julia had a similar recipe calling for ham. They both looked pretty standard with sautéed onions and peppers - you know - the standard stuff.

Boy were we wrong!

First I noted that the onions and peppers were to be sliced longways rather than being diced; not a big deal but this tells you something about what you're making. Next I find that instead of sautéing the vegetables, we are really slow cooking them until they are very soft and tender. By the time I added the sherry (a bit for the Pipérade, a bit for me!) and the red wine vinegar (we didn't have sherry vinegar), both Meg and I realized we were not in Kansas anymore.

So to back up, I started by sautéing the pancetta until crispy and then removing from the pan and reserving it for later. Next I added the onions, peppers and garlic to the same pan, sautéed briefly and then reduced the heat for 20 or 30 minutes cooking slowly without browning the vegetables.

Now the fun begins. We added chopped roma tomatoes, the vinegar & sherry, stock (we used good vegetable stock) and the reserved pancetta. I brought this to a boil and then strongly simmered the mixture to reduce and thicken a bit.

It's at this point that Meg and I realize we are not making an egg dish at all: we're making a delicious tangy stew with pancetta and vegetables into which we are going to drop a couple gently poached (OK, the first two were overdone) eggs. As Julia suggests, you really should read the recipe before you make it.

The result was unlike anything we'd ever had before; a tangy rich stew with precious prizes of pancetta combining with rich bits of poached egg. Oh and it was beautiful too; richly colored with green peppers and tomatoes. If we had our own food joint, this would definitely be on the brunch menu!

So it turns out this Basque food is often made with serrano ham (instead of pancetta) but otherwise is very similar to what we made. A bit of surfing reveals a restaurant of the same name in the Bay area which looks very tempting indeed.

Buvez: we had some delicious prosecco (operating from a number of white wine recommendations) but I think it was overmatched. This is beer food. Next time I might try indulging in the sweet maltiness of the Smuttynose Wheat Wine - a current cold Vermont winter warmer favorite of mine. Next time indeed...