First there was Paul Levy's column in the September 2000 Gourmet, castigating us for allowing this "vegetable menace" to invade our soups, our salads and our stomachs. Bells, said Levy, "dominate — both visually and gastronomically — anything they share a plate with."

As I love peppers, you'd think Levy's rant would have turned my face the color of a high-summer red bell. But peppers are such an everyday feature of our food, so "ordinary" that I just wondered what about them had raised this windmill-tilter's ire.

The pepper-growing industry did little to renew my interest. Like tomatoes, peppers (especially red and yellow) do not benefit from greenhouse growing, yet that is where nearly all of our grocery-store bells come from. One of the region's largest growers, BC Hot House, used to ask on their Web site, "What was Mother Nature thinking?" growing peppers and other produce outdoors.

Mother Nature might point out that bells, a defanged variety of chile pepper, are bred to be large, colorful and sweet. She might further say that, indeed, hot-house peppers are sugary and gorgeous, and they stack well in supermarket displays. But there's a good reason to grow peppers outdoors: taste. Those hot-house reds taste like sugar and little else.

So Levy was one of the catalysts that made me reappraise the role of the bell pepper in my life. The other was Eberhard Müller, formerly of Lutece in New York. I was not, unfortunately, his sauté cook, but I did read his article in The New York Times, also in September 2000 and later reprinted in the book "Chefs of the Times." He called hot-house peppers "insipid" and implied that you would use such a thing in his recipe at your peril (he would probably find out and whack you with a spoon).

Müller's recipe, for Sweet and Spicy Pepper Stew, sounded awesome. But where was I going to get the sun-grown peppers?
 

Eberhard Müller, From "The Chefs of the Times"
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil 12 small cipollini onions, sliced thin (or substitute shallots) Salt and pepper, to taste 2 medium garlic cloves, minced 4 pounds orange, yellow and red bell peppers 2 Hungarian wax peppers or other medium-hot peppers 1 red jalapeño 1. Halve, stem, seed and slice thin all the peppers. 2. Place the oil and onions in a large saucepan. Turn the heat to medium, season generously with salt and pepper, cover, and cook 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic, cover, and cook 1 minute. 3. Add the bell peppers and 2 tablespoons water, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, 6 minutes or until peppers begin to release their liquid. 4. Stir in the wax and jalapeño peppers, cover, and continue cooking, stirring several times, until the peppers are tender but not mushy, about 10 minutes. Adjust the seasonings and serve hot, warm or at room temperature. The stew may be served with rice or mashed potatoes, as a side to meat or fish, or mixed with a pound of boiled fingerling potatoes such as those available at local farmer's markets. Printer-friendly version.

The answer came in the form of the University Farmer's Market, and I was able to navigate to the peppers by smell. That's because Billy's, of Tonasket, Wash., sets up a huge roaster full of peppers in the late summer, drawing crowds with the aroma and free samples. They also sell unroasted peppers in endless colors and shapes — more than 20 varieties, from little spicy ones that look like big cherries to twisted reds and oranges that look like food, not photo-ops. Billy's also sets up at the Lake City and West Seattle markets.

I carted home an assortment of Billy's peppers and set about rediscovering some old favorites, thereby re-establishing the bell pepper's centrality in my kitchen.

I know of no better lunch than peperonata, the Italian dish of sautéed peppers, onions and tomatoes, made with an immoderate amount of red wine vinegar and served on toasted Grand Central Como bread. When I have pancetta in the house, which is more often than my doctor recommends, I place a crisp slice of it on the bread before piling on the peperonata.

The joy of this lunch is compounded by the fact that every one of the main ingredients is local. The farmer's markets become rife with tomatoes shortly after the peppers arrive, and onions are available all summer.

As an experiment, I tried making the same meal with greenhouse peppers, storage onions, canned tomatoes, Columbus pancetta, and La Brea Bakery bread from Whole Foods. All of these are great ingredients except the greenhouse peppers. But here there is no contest: Local rules.

Roasting peppers heightens their sweetness, yes, but also coaxes out a not unpleasant flavor just this side of burnt. If you don't have a 55-gallon pepper roaster handy, it's easy to roast them at home using my patented method, which I ripped off wholesale from Cook's Illustrated (May/June 1996). Slice the top and bottom off a pepper and discard the core and stem. Cut a vertical slice through the ring and open up the pepper, cutting any white ribs off the inside with a sharp knife. Flatten the pepper, place skin-side up on a cookie sheet (including the top and bottom you removed earlier) and broil until the skin is mostly blackened and puffy. Place the pieces in a paper bag or cling-wrap-covered bowl for 10 minutes, then slide the skins off and eat on a sandwich or tossed with pasta.

Finally, there is the matter of green peppers. It's true that a green pepper is simply an unripe red or yellow pepper. Lamb is young mutton, and no one thinks less of it on that account, but even Eberhard Müller warns that green peppers have "an unpleasant, bitter flavor." Eberhard! I thought we were friends.

Green peppers are no good for roasting (little sugar to caramelize), but their bitter flavor is actually quite pleasant, thank you. An Italian sausage sandwich would be nothing without its layer of green bells charred on a griddle or cast-iron pan. And I'll take a greenhouse green over its colorful but one-dimensional cousins any day.

Treated properly and eaten in season, the bell pepper is no menace in any of its colors. Almost. As for the vile purple pepper, don't get me started.