First, you just go and buy how ever much of fresh red paprika that you want. Wash them and dry them thoroughly and put them on a baking sheet or pan:
Turn your oven to it's highest heat and let it preheat. After it is ready, put the pan full of peppers inside and cook them until they are bubbly and cooked to where there is some black on them. My oven goes to 250C and it took about 20-30 min for my peppers. Don't open the oven during this process unless you must. Here's the finished product:
Now carefully remove the peppers from the oven and the baking sheet with tongs or something. Put them into a plastic bag, close it and let them cool. You'll have to pick them up with your hands to pull the skins off, so they really need to cool.
When they have cooled, they will look like this:
Now comes the fun part. Cut the stem of the pepper off and peel the skin away. It should come off rather easily, but if you need to, use a knife to help it along. You can keep the seeds, or discard them...whatever you like. You can keep the peppers whole (more authentic, I think) or cut them into slices. Here's what that process looks like:
For the final step, put your peppers into a bowl and add chopped fresh garlic, a little oil and vinegar and a little salt. Mix it all up and refrigerate it for a couple of hours to let it marinate. I like to refrigerate overnight and enjoy them the next day. As you can see, I like mine garlicy, too. No problem with vampires in our apartment!
These are great as a side dish, which is the way the locals have served them to me. I think they are fantastic on sandwiches or added to salads.
I don't know how long they will keep, as we eat them all in one day, but I would imagine it is best to eat them in a couple of days since they are fresh and have no preservatives.
Isvoljeti! Prijatno!
