The Red and the Black. Roasted Red Peppers, Black Quinoa and Allioli (with apologies to Stendhal)

Directions

1. stuffed peppers
2. Grab your tongs and light your burners. Grill the peppers directly on your flaming range top or else outside over a wood grill. Either method works. Turn the peppers constantly while they are over the hot flames. When black all around drop them into a paper sack and seal up, or else into a large bowl which you can cover with plastic wrap.
3. Toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet and set aside.
4. Chop the scallion.
5. When the peppers are cool enough to handle rub off the burnt black skin (it’s okay if a little is left on---it looks sexy), stem and seed them .
6. Cook the quinoa as usual using the 1 to 2 ratio, quinoa to liquid for about 15 minutes until cooked through.
7. In a bowl mix cooked quinoa, pine nuts and scallions along with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.
8. To plate up scoop the black quinoa mixture in to the pepper shells (it should be spilling out). Add a big smear of allioi to each plate.

1. Allioli
2. Being a lazy sod I use a blender or food processor for this job.
3. Begin by chopping the garlic and then mash it into a paste along with the salt in a mortar. Add that to the bottom of your blender along with the egg yolks.
4. With the motor running drizzle in the arbequina oil until it becomes a mayonnaise you would recognize.
5. *Note to cook, arbequinas are olives native to Catalonia and it’s fairly easy to find imported oil made from them but I must add that arbequina oils are being produced in California now and I really like the intensity of flavor you get from them.