Anyone who has used these in cooking or just tasted them raw with oil or the legendary bagna cauda will know exactly what we are talking about. Red or yellow, mainly the latter, with a hint of green, square shaped and robust, and of a considerable size, they are great to look at and boast an unbeatable flavour. The square pepper of Asti is unrivalled in terms of gourmet quality, with its delicate flesh, intense aroma, marked, delicious flavour, and a thin skin which falls away easily when baked. Something else again compared to most of the other varieties, insipid to the point of anonymity, which have taken over both supermarkets and local outdoor markets, often hailing from the greenhouses of northern Europe. The finest restaurants in the Asti area, following in the footsteps of legendary chef Lidia Alciata from the restaurant “Da Guido” in Costigliole, who was basically responsible for introducing these extraordinary peppers to the world’s foodies, still make regular use of them. But the global market is a merciless place. In the hamlet of Motta by the village of Costigliole – where the sand-based alluvial soils of the Tanaro river are a time-honoured spot for this type of cultivation, the growers who produced large quantities of these peppers a few years back, have turned to more profitable flower nurseries on this 500 hectare area. There are now around 5-6 hectares cared for by around twenty tenacious growers, turning out around 50 thousand kilos annually. A drop in the ocean as far as the worrying increase of standard, bland produce is concerned, but at the same time a heritage of quality to safeguard and build on in terms of yield, as the Slow Food presidium dedicated to the square pepper of Asti aims to do. The village of Costigliole got things in motion with the aim of being granted de.c.o. status, acknowledgement of communal denomination of origin, an accolade inspired by Luigi Veronelli.
Classic dishes include peppers and rabbit, or peppers dipped into bagna cauda, but the definitive local speciality is peperonata, a mixture of cooked tomatoes and peppers.
The peppers can be conserved in vinegar or, better still, grilled and then sealed into glass jars which are sterilised in a bain marie.