Capsicums

"if you held a contest for the raw ingredient that looks best casually displayed on a worktop, the capsicum family would probably win: glossy, plump and multicoloured, they are catwalk swanky. Just don't forget to eat them." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

I think there is no vegetable that says Mediterranean to me more than the capsicum. Which is somewhat wrong really, considering it's yet another of those South American vegetables that European cuisine just couldn't exist without today. I suppose Spain and Hungary are particularly well-known for them, but they are eaten all the way around the Mediterranean - and beyond. I have already talked about the Yugoslav capsicum stew that I used to make. Today I am just rhapsodising about them a little bit - and not in such a perfect way as in the quote above.

Yes I do love to look at them. They are so bright and cheerful and so varied in shape and size. And that's not even including chillies. Today they are the inspiration for my evening meal - because I am getting down to just a few potential ingredients in my fridge - capsicum being the one I have most of. So it's going to be a chicken, salami and capsicum pasta with some dried tomatoes and a few fresh ones too. Maybe a few black olives - to be truly Mediterranean.

When I was at high school in England, back in the 50s, our Swedish school cook used to put capsicum in almost everything. I didn't like them all that much and neither did many of us conservative English schoolgirls. I remember somebody asking her once why she put capsicum in everything and she said it was because they were packed with vitamins. Which they are - and lots of other very good things too.

And they're generally cheap and available all year - in the market anyway. They cost somewhat more in the supermarkets. Ridiculously more in fact. In Yugoslavia they were ridiculously cheap. Yesterday I was talking about the Irish mono diet of potatoes. From our visit to Yugoslavia you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bit of a mono diet there - of capsicums. It was virtually the only vegetable you could buy. Tomatoes I guess. Another South American import.

As well as being healthy they are amazingly versatile. You can do just about anything with them, from eating them raw in salads, to drying them in the sun and making paprika from them. Grill them until the skin is black and peel them and you have a completely different vegetable. Fry them, stew them, stuff them, pickle them, grind them up into sauces and relishes - it's endless what you can do with them. You can even make a butter - scones, pancakes, bread - on and on and on.

I always have some in the fridge.