The Basque American Cross
Tomato & Piparra Jam
A long-cooked confit that crosses two registers: the Spanish-Basque piparra (the small, mildly-spicy pickled green pepper from Ibarra and the Goierri valley) and the slow-cooked tomato confit native to the Mediterranean canon. Whole tomatoes are reduced over low heat with sugar, vinegar and salt until concentrated; piparras are stripped, chopped, folded in late so their fresh-herbal pickle-bright character survives the cook; piquant pepper threads in the supporting spice. The result reads as a tomato confit lifted by the unmistakable Basque pickle note — sweet-acid-pungent at the first taste, vegetal-fresh under it, with the slow-cooked tomato as the lipid-binding base. Excellent on a cheese board, beside a tortilla, on a steak, in a sandwich.