My youngest loves stuffed peppers. I've botched them so many times but she's my youngest so....one more try.
This time was a huge smash hit. Moist. Fluffy. Creamy even. Flavorful through and through. No rubbery tasteless peppers or biting flavor. Had to share.
Now that I think about it, meatloaf, meatballs, stuffed peppers, all about the same thing. Nobody wants dry any of that, so if you have a good meatball recipe try using it for your meatloaf! In fact, meatloaf in Italian is "Polpettone"...Giant Meatball. This recipe is a LOT like my mother-in-law's meatballs. Nuff said.
Preheat oven to 350.
4 medium size green peppers. I buy the cheap ones that are starting to turn yellow or red. They're better anyway.
Bowl A: Mix all together.
1 c cooked brown or white rice
1 lb ground beef, hopefully grass fed
2 eggs
1 chopped onion
1/2 c Italian breadcrumbs (or add a tsp Italian seasoning to regular crumbs)
1/2 c Parmesan
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp each salt and pepper
Bowl B: Mix all together
4 c tomato sauce, purée or passato
1/4 c apple cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
Pinch cayenne
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp Italian seasoning
Extra Parmesan
Opt: mozzarella or provolone
Halve peppers through the stem, removing stem seeds and ribs. Blanche in boiling water for 2 min. Drain and set aside.
Salt and pepper the inside of the green pepper boats.
Pack the peppers with meat from Bowl A and place in a casserole dish. They shouldn't leave much space. Pour sauce from Bowl B over peppers, coating the whole pepper. Sauce will come up the sides. You'll want all the sauce.
Mound some parmesan on top of each stuffed pepper and bake for 1 hour 15 min.
Toss a loaf of bread in the oven the last 10 min to get crusty.
Remove from oven. Afterward I like to throw some bits of shredded mozzarella or provolone on top to melt while it cools enough to eat. Serve with extra sauce.
Should serve 4-6 but make extra. Tried to take a picture but bowls were cleaned before I knew it!
I love cream puffs. They're like most baked goods ...homemade is a whole different animal than the stuff we pick up most days at the grocery store. Definitely worth the 10 minutes it took to whip these up.
Having to bring a couple of dishes to a get together with friends, I chose firstly cream puffs with pastry cream. They are such a crowd pleaser. About ten years ago, the Italian's sweet cousin and her husband came to visit from Indiana. One of the recipes she shared was her cream puffs, what Sicilians call beignet. I'm probably spelling that wrong but honestly, it's a French word they've hijacked anyway. ;)
She whips up cream puffs in no time. I've made them a few times, but of course I'm going to try to find an easier way...so online I choose a recipe done in the cuisinart! Super easy. Love my kitchen robot. Well, they weren't even worth taking a picture of. We ate them. Flavor was good. Didn't puff hardly at all. Ugh. So with my need to use the leftover pastry cream from last night, I fall back to Enza's recipe. Grazie cara!!!
Sicilian Beignets
1 stick butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour
Pinch salt
Pinch sugar
4 eggs.
That's it. Crazy easy.
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So, melt the butter in a pan on medium heat. When melted add water, salt and sugar and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils, turn heat to low and dump in the flour. Stir the mixture to absorb the flour and then beat, kind of smearing, with a wooden spoon for 3 min or so till flour is cooked. Remove from heat and beat some more until it has cooled a bit. You don't want any steam coming off that lump of dough.
Add an egg and beat with that spoon till its absorbed. You'll think it's not working and you're going to be smearing egg around for 10 minutes. Don't worry. It'll work. Add the other eggs one by one, beating till each is absorbed before adding the next.
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Once all are in there you keep beating till it's elastic, another minute or so. See me pulling that spoon up? The dough will try to follow the spoon for an inch or two. No more than that, but that's just perfection. See how easy that was?
Spoon onto parchment and bake at 400 for 40 minutes. They will become about 4 times larger than the lump you put on the sheet. Below is a pic of end result with the raw dough size on the right. Good sizes are either a heaping eating spoon for a large one or a half spoon for the small two-bite size ones. If you like eclairs, put that dough in a ziploc bag and cut off the corner. Pipe a fat line about 1" by 3" on the parchment sheet. Bake the same.
Poke a little hole in the side (or the top if you made eclairs) with a knife, turn off oven and return to oven another 10-20 min. They should crisp up and dry inside a bit.
Control yourself and don't eat them all before you fill them! Great with a salmon mousse, whipped cream, pastry cream... Just yum.
Pastry cream is next...and you'll be happy it is.
