Sometimes the difference between me ordering a completely unnecessary meal from Seamless on a weekday, or pretending that bread, cheese and other refrigerator condiments equals a dinner, is the answer to the question: “Do I need to heat this up?”
Yes, I guess this is an indicator of my weekday laziness. But trying to cram a full-time job (that doesn’t end at 5pm), a social life, a workout schedule (necessary so I can keep eating cookies the size of my head) and cooking food at home into ONE LIFE often seems impossible, and like I’m always a step and a half behind where I want to be. So food that can be served cold when I am starving after a long day at work is always welcome, and sometimes necessary. These Turkish stuffed peppers have been really doing the trick for me lately, and not only because I can grab one out of the fridge and just dig in.
Another selling point for these peppers is that they are a meal in one. In their own edible vessel, no less! They are filling and vegetarian. They’ve also got a lot of interesting flavor, but it’s not intimidatingly interesting, if you know what I mean. There’s currants and pine nuts, for sweetness, nuttiness and texture. There’s cinnamon and allspice, but it’s not cloying. There’s just enough tomato for acidity. Served with a few dollops of plain yogurt mixed quickly with a crushed garlic clove, and it’s hard to beat this dinner.
These are also so easy and fast to make, with barely any chopping – one of my favorite elements of any recipe. Basically, it’s just mixing some ingredients together with rice and simmering for a little while before filling up your peppers and putting them in the oven for 45 minutes with their little caps on. Frankly, the most difficult part of this recipe is finding appropriate peppers. They need to be sturdy enough to not fall apart during baking, and they need to have a good, even base and stand firmly without falling over sideways. I spent a good ten minutes camped out in front of the bell pepper bin carefully selecting every single one, standing it up and then rejecting it, much to the chagrin of every shopper in the produce aisle looking to purchase a pepper. But in the end, I did find six fine peppers that did their job marvelously. Here’s to standards!
Ingredients
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 1/4 cup short-grain or risotto rice
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons pine nuts
- 3 tablespoons currants or tiny black raisins
- 1 large tomato, peeled and chopped (I like to grate them)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice
- 2 tablespoons chopped mint
- 2 tablespoons chopped dill
- 2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 6 medium green or red bell peppers
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F.
- For the filling, fry the onion in 3 tablespoons of oil until soft. Add the rice and stir until thoroughly coated and translucent. Pour in 2 cups water and add salt, pepper and sugar. Stir well and cook for 15 minutes, or until the water has been absorbed but the rice is still a little underdone. Stir in the pine nuts, currants or raisins, tomato, cinnamon, allspice, mint, dill, parsley and lemon juice, as well as the rest of the oil.
- Retaining the stalk, cut a circle around the stalk end of the peppers and set to one side to use as caps. Remove the cores and seeds with a spoon and discard. Fill the peppers with the rice mixture and replace the caps.
- Arrange the peppers side by side in a shallow baking dish, pour about 1/2 inch of water into the bottom and bake in the oven for 45 to 55 minutes, or until the peppers are tender. Be careful that they do not fall apart.
- Serve cold, accompanied by a bowl of plain yogurt beaten with or without crushed garlic.
Notes
From Arabesque
March 21, 2017 at 8:41 pm
i love the hint of sweetness when there’s raisins or bits of dried fruit in things like this! and serving it with garlicky yogurt sounds delicious.