Sweet Pepper recipes

This is the Italian sweet pepper braise that belongs in every gardener's September repertoire. Sliced peppers are cooked low and slow with tomatoes, garlic and a splash of red wine vinegar until they collapse into a jammy, intensely savoury tangle that improves every day it sits in the fridge. Eat it alongside grilled meat, stir it through pasta, pile it onto bruschetta — it is endlessly useful.

Raw sweet peppers have a juicy crunch and clean sweetness that gets completely lost if you cook them, and this salad is built around that. Thick strips of fresh pepper are tossed with nutty chickpeas, salty crumbled feta and a warm, smoky paprika dressing that ties it all together. It takes fifteen minutes, works as a main lunch or a generous side, and is genuinely better at room temperature than it is straight from the fridge.

Lecso is the Hungarian answer to ratatouille — a slow-cooked, lusciously thick stew of sweet peppers and tomatoes, seasoned with a generous amount of sweet Hungarian paprika. It is traditionally made with lard and served with eggs stirred through it, but this version lets the peppers be absolutely central. Eat it with bread, over rice, or alongside grilled meat.

Six sweet peppers and a tray of tomatoes go into a hot oven until blistered and caramelised, then get blitzed into a silky, deeply flavoured soup that tastes like the very best of summer. A swirl of crème fraîche and some crusty bread are all you need. This is the soup you make when the pepper glut hits in August and you want something that actually does it justice.