Oct 14th, 2007
Stuffed peppers
Last week I made a batch of stuffed peppers, using a recipe from one of the Moosewood cookbooks. (I can’t remember right now which one it was, and I’m too lazy to go to the cookbook bookcase and figure it out. I know it was Moosewood, though. We have nearly all of their books except for the most recent one and the one for cooking for a gazillion people at a time.) The filling is millet, corn, onion, and black beans. I included a couple of small purple peppers on the trap in the hope that their color might entice my purple-obsessed daughter to eat them; only when I took the tray out of the over did I remember that cooking turns the exotic purple peppers into pedestrian green ones. And no, she didn’t eat them.
My husband and I did, though, and were fairly pleased with the result. The millet was drier that I would have liked. It’s possible that I overcooked it; this isn’t something I’ve cooked more than once or twice before, so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to turn out. I wonder if cooking it in my awesome rice cooker might result in something moister. Hmmm.
might result in something moister. Hmmm.Any millet cookers out there who can offer tips for preparing this grain? Do any of you have any vegetarian stuffed-pepper recipes that you love? I like the idea of this dish, but I think I need to try a different angle.
I don’t have a new recipe for you, but after tasting yours, I did make some based on your recipe using Israeli couscous instead of millet (had it on hand) and added some diced grilled veggies and tomatoes. Buttons ate it and really liked it and I think part of that was the fact that I had her stuff the peppers and she did a great job! If I come across any vegetarian stuffed pepper recipe that looks good, I’ll send it your way.
I’ve done stuffed peppers with Quinoa before with tomatoes, onion, black beans, corn, chili powder and cumin. It was OK, but not the greatest thing I’ve made. The problem I usually have with stuffed peppers is that they get soggy at the bottom as the water is drawn out of the pepper during cooking. I’ve tried piercing the bottoms, but even that doesn’t help.
I typically take the top off and set them up vertically - you have done it horizontally so the pepper is more shallow. I wonder if that contributes to a dryer stuffed pepper, and if it would fix my problem to half them vertically (and conversely, perhaps they would be more moist if you cut off the tops and used more of the whole pepper like a deep bowl?)