Day 29. Favourite foods when you're ill.

When I'm under the weather I usually crave unhealthy comfort food like pickled onion Monster Munch or a Cadbury's Caramel. This was Bea's request, she is suffering with flu at the moment: roasted red peppers with olive bread.

It really is delicious and also works well as a side with fish. Here's the recipe in case you fancy making it.

Piedmont Roasted Red Peppers (Delia Online)

Serves four as a light supper.

Ingredients:

4 large red peppers (green aren’t suitable)
16-20 baby plum or cherry tomatoes
8 anchovy fillets (tinned in olive oil)
2 cloves of garlic
8 dessertspoons of olive oil
Freshly milled black pepper
Fresh basil (to serve)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or Gas Mark 4, 350°F)

Begin by cutting the peppers in half from stalk to base, leaving the stalks intact and removing the seeds (the stalks aren’t edible but they look nice and help the pepper halves to keep their shape).

Lay the pepper halves in a lightly oiled roasting tray. Use a solid, shallow tray as if the sides are too high the peppers won’t have those lovely nutty, toasted edges.

Slice the tomatoes in half and place 4 or 5 halves in each pepper, depending on the size. (Delia recommends removing the skins from the tomatoes but if you use baby plum or cherry varieties I find you don’t need to do this).

After that, roughly chop the anchovy fillets allowing one fillet per pepper and lay these over the tomatoes.

Peel the garlic cloves, slice them thinly and divide the slices equally among the tomatoes and anchovies.

Now spoon 1 dessertspoon of olive oil into each pepper, season with freshly milled pepper (but no salt because of the anchovies) and place the tray on a high shelf in the oven for the peppers to roast for 50 minutes to 1 hour.

When you dish up the peppers make sure you use all of the delicious juices and add a few leaves of basil to each pepper half.

Serve with good bread; focaccia or olive bread is perfect.