When peppers meet the heat of the oven, their sweetness really comes to the fore. Peppers are not to be hurried. They take a while to become completely tender, and I often give them a few minutes in boiling water before slipping them into a roasting tin and a hot oven. You need to pull out the stops with the filling for peppers: onions sauteed slowly until sweet and nut-brown, coarsely minced pork with plenty of fat.
The roasted peppers are, perhaps surprisingly, good when eaten cool though not fridge-cold with a salad of potatoes and crisp, chunky-cut cucumber with dill. Sometimes they come as a warm salad themselves, straight from the oven: outer skin peeled away, scarlet flesh anointed with a classic dressing of olive oil, basil and balsamic vinegar.
No matter how long you roast a green pepper for, there is always a back note of bitterness, so I choose the sweeter red or orange. Halve the fruit, then cut out any hard inner core and shake out the seeds. They bring nothing to the party. The hollows are important to take the filling.
If you cook them for too long in the water, they will collapse, and you can't stuff a flat pepper. Pull them out of the water when the flesh has slightly softened but is still keeping its shape. Stuff your peppers with a mixture that may include pork, tomatoes, breadcrumbs, and even some pine kernels or raisins for variety.
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