It’s now almost unimaginable to think that, until as recently as 200 years ago, bell peppers were not much appreciated or commonly used in Italy. In his 1773 cookbook Il Cuoco Galante, Neopolitan cook and scholar Vincenzo Corrado considered them ‘too rustic and vulgar’. Barely a century later, they’re inseparable from the food of the osterias, or inns, where they would often be served in preserved form with vinegar and oil, nex