Alice Vollenweider: Last fall, a reader asked me for the recipe for a crema di peperoni. I passed the question on to my readers and in response received a very tempting recipe from Markus Schnyder of the Winzerstuebli restaurant in Zurich-Hoengg: Yellow and red peppers are best, and they should be as full-fleshed as possible. You brush them with a little oil and roast them in the stove at 250 degrees in a baking dish. After 10 to 15 min (depending on the stove) turn them. It is important that they take color and their skin blisters. After another 10 to 15 minutes, remove them from the heat and wrap them individually in kitchen roll, cover them with a kitchen towel and let them cool. After about an hour you can remove the skin from them. They are now soft enough to be mashed with a hand blender.
Refined with cream or olive oil, the crema goes great with pasta, a touch of garlic and black pepper from the mill round off the dish.