Stuffed Vegetables

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Now that it’s cooler here and all my peppers are ripening at the same time, it seemed appropriate to mix up some good stuff and get stuffing. Like many gardeners, my peppers did not grow into nice, upright specimens. So, I laid them sideways and that worked just fine. Most of the stuffing was local and in fact used up bits and pieces of other items in the fridge: parsley and dill, some roasted tomato sauce I’d made, a few diced mushrooms, sauteed onion, pine nuts, tiny cubes of leftover cheeses, basmati rice (I soaked it for 15 mins. first), and some bacon. I coated the bottom of the casserole with olive oil, poured in about a half-inch of water, and covered the dish for half the baking time of 1hr 15mins. The next day, I made a similar filling (handful of currants added and walnuts instead of pine nuts) with small eggplant.