Savory Stuffed Peppers

Originally posted on November 8, 2012 at http://www.delicieux.eu/?p=1240 as a guest post.

It's been nearly a full year since I started writing as A Reluctant Foodie. I’ll admit to having been a little lazy about posting lately, but this is my 83rd posting -- not bad for someone who hadn’t written much since college ( I won’t date myself by telling you when that was). In that year I've learned a lot about myself, blogging and social media in general.

Like every other new blogger, my biggest challenge was getting people to actually visit and read what I had written. I figured out pretty quickly that the best way to drive traffic to the blog was through Twitter. So, @ReluctantFoodee was launched on Twitter. Yes, I know it is spelled wrong -- @Reluctantfoodie was taken. At first, I struggled to get followers but as of this writing, I have over 1,400 followers! I'm proud to say that since I don't buy followers, rarely follow back commercially oriented people/businesses and I block the obvious spammers my follower count is pretty pure.

A few amongst this illustrious group have become friends, as much as people who have never met can be friends. One in particular stands out. Anneli is an Englishwoman living with her husband and children in the French Pyrenees. She is a private chef who blogs at Delicieux . You really should check out her out.
Recently, in an effort to pull me out of my writing funk, I proposed that it might be fun for both of us to prepare the same basic dish and to guest blog the results for each other. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, and I've pointed this out in many of my other posts, I don't cook. The culinary talent in our home is all with my wife Cynthia. I eat, clean up and write, period. So really, Cynthia and Anneli decided to make the same basic dish. There, I feel better now.

If you're a regular reader you know that Cynthia and I garden a good bit. We try to grow a reasonably wide selection of veggies because they are so much better than anything you can buy at even the best supermarkets. When Anneli and I hatched our little plot, we happened to have a goodly number of ripe peppers ready to be harvested. We agreed on stuffed peppers as the common dish because, everyone loves a good stuffed pepper, right?

Here is the recipe Cynthia put together for the great stuffed pepper challenge!

 Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 4-6 whole peppers, tops and ribs removed, meat from around stem chopped and reserved for filling

•         2.5-3 cups cooked rice 
•          3 slices good smoky bacon
•          1 cup chopped onion
•          vegetable oil
•          2 cloves garlic, smashed
•          2 tbsp tomato paste
•          2 tsp curry powder (or to taste)
•          1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (or to taste)
•          1 tbsp brown sugar, 1/3 cup sherry, 1/3 cup Kikkoman teriyaki sauce, 2/3 c water – mixed together

Preparation
In a large mixing bowl, place beef and room temp rice.  You'll be adding ingredients to this bowl as we go, so size accordingly.

Cook bacon in skillet until crispy.  Remove from heat and set aside to drain.  Leaving bacon fat in pan, add enough additional oil so you have a nice thin coat of fat in the pan.  About a tbsp total.

Saute onions on med-high heat until soft.  Dump on meat and rice.

Crumble bacon.  Dump on meat, rice and onion.

To make the sauce:  Put the pan back on medium high heat, add 1 tbsp veg oil and when hot but not smoking, add curry powder and red pepper, stirring constantly.

When fragrant, about 30 seconds in, add garlic and tomato paste.  Cook for a minute or so - the fragrance should be roasty, but not burned.  (If your curry or garlic burns, start over.  The bitter taste will never go away.)

Add the sherryaki mixture (get it, sherry-aki) and whisk a bit to remove all lumps and smooth out the sauce. Simmer for 10 minutes, until you taste the sauce and the alcohol from the sherry isn't prevalent.  (If this doesn't happen, you need to buy better sherry.  I use an amontillado that I also drink as an aperitif.  If you can't drink it from the bottle, it won't get better with cooking.)

Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper.  Add more crushed red pepper if you like a little hurt.

Add about 1/4 cup of sauce to the bottom of a baking dish.

Add half of what's left to the meat, rice, onion and bacon mixture. Mix thoroughly but gently.

Fill pepper one at a time and place in baking dish.  It helps if it has high sides and holds the peppers snugly. If all you've got is a low rider, cut peppers in half instead of removing top.  Not as pretty, but I like the ratio of pepper to filling better this way.

Before covering with foil (I parchment first then foil) distribute the remainder of the sauce on top of the peppers.

 Bake covered for 45 minutes at 350.  Uncover and bake an additional 15.  The sauce takes to browning very well, so if you're of a mind, a low broil helps you get your brown on.

 Let sit a few moments before serving.

You’ve Got To Pick a Pepper or Two!

A Guest Blog by Anneli

I asked Al to guest post for me over on Delicieux and happily he agreed and it kind of turned into a little ingredients cook off! Wanting to keep it seasonal and from the garden if possible, Al suggested ‘peppers’ as he still had some beauties just turning ripe. We too had peppers a plenty although somewhat smaller and less fabulous! But the ‘Pepper-off’ was born and so here we are!

Immediately my mind was racing with possibilities and I found myself lying in bed at night pondering ingredient combinations. In my usual manner, I came up with lots and narrowed it down, but still couldn’t settle on one outright favourite. So I set about a week of stuffed pepper suppers! I knew I had to try them all to make up my mind.

A little oddly, eating this many peppers did not become dull. Every dish was interesting and enjoyable and reminded me just how damn delicious peppers are! In fact I am not a fan of peppers raw but roasted they are just so sweet, juicy and full of flavour that they become something else entirely. But actually, I discovered that this was something I needed to be careful of. Peppers are so powerful that they can overwhelm less robust ingredients and wash away all your well planned deliciousness.

Peppers are such clever little vessels for stuffing. Upright or laying down they offer up an empty cavity just begging to be loaded up. A whole pepper is very filling when packed to the brim and makes a substantial main course. But cut in half and filled, half a pepper makes a great starter or lunch.

First I shall tell you about a failure as I feel that full disclosure is a good thing in this instance. The reason for this failure of this pepper dish was because of the sum of its parts when in fact, individually everything was fantastic! This is where I learnt the valuable lesson about pepper power. I decided to stuff a pepper with a fresh cream cheese pesto risotto. In my head this was going to be a winner. I blended my pesto, rich with garlic, pine nuts, basil and cream cheese and stirred it into my oozy soft risotto. It tasted frankly incredible. Then I stuffed it into a pepper that I had roasted a little already and popped it back in the oven, I truly expected great things. But when it came to the eating, so much of the wonderful flavour of the risotto just disappeared under the clout of the pepper! In the end, my husband and I were reduced to scooping out the risotto and eating the pepper separately. They were not lovers…..

So, moving swiftly on to the successes. There were two dishes that worked really well but I only have space for one recipe. Suffice as to say, peppers stuffed with garlic lentils and tons of veggies was a delight. But I shall opt instead to tell you about Peppers Stuffed with Spiced Onions and Egg. Does that sound like a strange combo to you? Well, I thought it sounded rather nice and I was proved right!

The foundation for this dish is an Indian inspired spiced onion mixture and a whole egg baked within the pepper. This for me is a nice lunchtime or brunchtime dish. The baked eggs should have lovely soft yolks still so that when eaten, the yolks spill over the onions and pepper coating all in a gooey eggy sauce. I served my peppers sitting on a little mound of turmeric spiced basmati rice.

Peppers Stuffed with Spiced Onions & Egg

Serves 4 for lunch

Ingredients

•

2 large peppers

•

1 tbsp olive oil

•

2 medium onions, sliced

•

4 small tomatoes, skinned & de-seeded & chopped

•

1 tsp Garam Massala spice

•

1 mild chilli, deseeded, finely chopped

•

½ tsp chilli powder (optional)

•

½ tsp cumin powder

•

4 medium eggs

•

Basmati rice cooked with a teaspoon of turmeric to serve

Preparation

•

Pre-heat your oven 180Fan00C/395F. Carefully cut your peppers in half lengthways, cutting through the stem if possible. Gently remove all the seeds and white pith from within to leave a lovely clean cavity to stuff.

•

Brush very lightly with a little olive oil all over. Place in a baking dish and bake for 20 minutes.

•

Meanwhile, heat your remaining olive oil and fry your onions on a medium heat until softened but not coloured. Then add your chopped chilli. Whilst these are frying you can skin and de-seed your tomatoes and then chop them into smallish chunks.

•

Add your tomatoes to the onions and your dry spices. Cook this out for 5-10 minutes until the tomatoes have broken down around the onions made a thickish sauce. Season and taste and adjust your spicing if necessary.

•

Take your peppers out of the oven and spoon a little of the onion mixture into the base of each pepper. Not too much mind – you must leave enough room for the egg.

•

Take an egg and break it very gently, close as you can to the pepper in order to control it so that it does not slide out of the cavity. Repeat with all your peppers and eggs.

•

Pop them back in the oven for 8-12 minutes – keeping a close eye on them – as you want your eggs to be just cooked with a slight wobble still ensuring a runny egg yolk.

•

Season the eggs and serve your peppers sitting on a mound of basmati rice.

Blog by Anneli Faiers from www.delicieux.eu

Biog: I am a Private Chef living South West France. I am a 35 year old, mother of two, living the rural dream. I love to cook all food and am inspired by fresh produce and the cuisine here in France. From rustic traditional dishes to vegetarian to fine dining, I try to cook it all and share my journey with you. Stop by and check it out!

I ate what and liked it? Tofu? Really?

You can probably tell from the title of this post that I haven't been the biggest fan of tofu. I've tried it many times, in many forms and just can't get past the texture. Yes, I know there are various grades of firmness available, but none of them have worked for me. OK, maybe a few pieces in a good hot and sour soup, like at P.F. Chang's, but that's where I've typically drawn the line. Well, last night, at least for one meal, that might have changed.

Cynthia tells me that I need to give her some latitude for supplying an appropriate amount of protein in our diet on Meatless Mondays and that one of the better options is tofu. Lovers of this coagulated soybean curd will tell you it has a "subtle flavor" that works well with many spices and flavors. I'm pretty sure that dried Elmer's glue would fit that description also but the nutritional value just wouldn't be there. Cyn informed me we were out of Elmer's anyway, so, tofu it was. She insured me it would not be the dominant ingredient.

Our dinner started out with a very nice asparagus dish, simply blanched and covered in hazel nuts that had been chopped, lightly toasted in butter and shallots and just a dash of campaign vinegar. Yum.

Next course - stuffed peppers. One of my favorite comfort foods. However, these stuffed peppers were not only vegetarian, they were vegan.The stuffing consisted of crimini mushrooms, onion, garlic, the pepper top trimmings, long, hot Thai peppers, carrots and Lundberg wild rice blend.

Ah, yes, there was also tofu. There were 12 ounces of extra firm tofu, cut into small cubes which had been simmered in 1/2 cup of a "special sauce" - a tomato based curry sauce with sherry, crushed red pepper and garlic. The tofu, as it always does, absorbed the flavor of the sauce. After stuffing, the peppers were baked at for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees (covered) and then an additional 10 minutes uncovered. Don't tell anyone, particularly Cynthia, but I really liked it. I'm planning on eating the leftovers for lunch on Wednesday when, as is the case for most leftovers, it will probably be even better.