Your Flag: With Eggs or Without?

Prefer your “flag” with eggs or without? Clearly, I can’t be referring to that pennant you solemnly salute with hands over heart (perhaps?). This “flag,” that Umbrian tri-colored vegetable dish, la bandiera (“flag”), is often voraciously sharerd by rural families – and not only! – on summer nights.

This is a typical Umbrian rural dish of la cucina povera (“poor man’s cooking” i.e, humble, simple cuisine of ingredients one raises). During our first summer on the land here in Umbria (1976), I learned to make this simple but delicious dish from my farm neighbors, who often made it when the bell peppers and tomatoes abounded in the vegetable gardens in July and August. By August, surplus vegetables and tomatoes would be put up in bell jars for wintertime enjoynent of la bandiera. Pino and I, too, always had a couple dozen jars of la bandiera boiling away with our 220 or so bell jars of tomatoes (for the coming year’s tomato sauces) in a huge oil drum, each jar wrapped up in newspaper to avoid cracking as the boil rose. Hot work in August, taking all day.

[lcaption]…and Chiarina, rural friend who taught me to make the bandiera, serves up this dish to our friend, Kevin[/lcaption]

Bandiera (“Flag”)
****Note that the ingredients are green, red, white = the Italian flag.

Ingredients (for 6- 8)

4 – 6 green bell peppers
1 large white onion
5-8 very ripe Roma tomatoes
olive oil, q. b. (“quanto basta” or “as much as you need”)
salt, q b.

[lcaption]You’ll need tomatoes, bell peppers and onions for your bandiera[/lcaption]

Heat olive oil in frying pan. When you can tell that the oil is hot (but not smoking!), slide in one piece of white onion and when it starts to sizzle, add all chopped onions, then peppers. Simmer a few minutes until peppers start to seem tender, then add tomatoes cut into small pieces. Salt to taste (small pugno or “fistful). Simmer til cooked. Serve hot.