Sausage and Rice Stuffed Peppers

It's been 100 recipes, and I'm still alive.  And hopefully, you are too, and maybe even better off for checking in here from time to time.  So for this one, I'm not going to present anything too extreme, just something delicious, healthy, and fairly easy to make.  And for a change of pace, I didn't even use a recipe for this one - just threw some things together from memory in a way that I thought would work out well, and it turned out that it did.

Today we contemplate the stuffed pepper.  Who would ever think to take a large, cavernous vegetable, hollow it out, cram it full of goodness, and then roast it and treat it like an edible bowl?  Well, I don't know, but let's hope that he was given a thousand virgins and quite a few goats for his discovery.  You could do this with tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant or squash if you really knew what you were doing.  But as an easy start, let's focus on the most forgiving of all of these from a cooking and structural integrity standpoint - the pepper.  If you don't like bell peppers, then I have nothing for you.  But consider that you may only dislike green bell peppers, which are slightly less sweet, and consider giving this a try.

Bell Peppers Stuffed with Sausage and Rice
by me

• 2 large red bell peppers
• 1/2 lb Italian sweet or hot sausage, removed from casings if present
• 1 small zucchini, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 rib celery, diced
• 1 green onion, sliced thinly
• 1/2 c coarse breadcrumbs
• 2 oz firm aged cheese, such as Parmesan or Asiago, grated
• 1.5 c cooked brown (or white) rice
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• tomato sauce or aged balsamic vinegar, for plating
• 1 tbsp parsley, minced, for plating

The peppers loaf about lazily on the countertop, unaware of their fate.

Preheat your oven to 400 deg F.

Begin by halving the peppers lengthwise, removing the core and seeds, and cutting away as much of the white membrance as you can (this is bitter, and also takes up space).  Now, in a large saute pan over high heat, brown the sausage in 1 tbsp olive oil, breaking up with your spoon into small pieces.  When browned, remove from pan and drain on a paper towel, and saute zucchini, garlic, onion, celery, and green onion in the next 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Remove to a large bowl.

In the meantime, take a small frying pan and heat the last 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Toast the breadcrumbs if they're not already toasty, and set aside.

Now, the rest is fairly straightforward.  Take everything you've got except the peppers themselves and the breadcrumbs, and stir them together in a big bowl.  Taste, and season as needed with salt and pepper.  Try not to just stop here and eat the whole thing, because you will probably want to.  But we must forge ahead - now stuff this into the pepper halves, packing in the filling somewhat densely and mounding up slightly.  Don't get so crazy that it's spilling out, because next you have to sprinkle on the toasted breadcrumbs.

The filling, resting before an epic journey in a hollowed out pepper through the fires of Mt. Ofen.

The peppers, packed and ready to go.

In a reasonably sized glass baking dish, brush a few drops of olive oil onto the bottom and situate the pepper halves.  Toss in the oven for about 30 minutes, until peppers are soft and starting to brown at the edges, and bread crumbs are brown on top.

To serve, either place on a bed of homemade marinara sauce, or drizzle with balsamic vinegar, as I have done.  I tried this both ways and preferred the tomato sauce version, but both are going to impress people.  Sprinkle with minced parsley, and serve.

Exhausted from their journey, the peppers lie unsuspectingly before hungry predators.

At last, the stuffed pepper has come to its final resting place

Brown Rice Salad with Crunchy Sprouts and Seeds

This recipe serves to highlight just how bad my picture-taking skills are.  While this was meant to be one of my flagship recipes, because it's so unique, healthy, and delicious, my pictures make this look a bit less than exciting.  And there was no opportunity to go back for another pass, because this disappeared within about a day, and with complete disregard for you, the viewing public.  Oh well, use your imagination of putting this on a bed of lettuce or something.

I found this recipe in a magazine with a number of other salads devoted to interesting grains.  This one was a natural first step, because I already had some cooked brown rice, a bunch of chives in need of a home, zucchini from the farmer's market, and a mountain of sprouts from my most recent sprout-growing adventures.  There really wasn't any excuse NOT to make this dish, and I'm glad I backed myself into this tasty corner.

Brown Rice Salad with Crunchy Sprouts and Seeds
Modified slightly from Bon Appétit, June 2012

• 3/4 cup (packed) chopped fresh chives
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1.5 tablespoons (or more) fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt plus more
• 1 1/2 cups mixed dried sprouted legumes (such as mung beans and lentils)
• 1 1/2 cups grated zucchini, lightly squeezed to remove liquid
• 1/2 cup cooked brown rice
• 2 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup toasted salted sunflower seeds
• 1/3 cup toasted salted shelled pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
• 1/3 cup coarsely chopped roasted unsalted almonds
• Freshly ground black pepper

First, make the chive vinaigrette.  Purée chives, oil, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 teaspoon salt in a food processor until smooth. Strain chive vinaigrette through a fine-mesh sieve into a small bowl.

Get the chives, and puree them with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt to make a tasty vinaigrette dressing for this

If you're really worried about the bacterial content of your sprouts (and you probably shouldn't be if you made your own), cook them in a large pot of lightly salted boiling water until just tender, about 5 minutes, which I think is a terrible idea. But assuming you do, after cooking remove them from the heat and let stand, covered, for 3 minutes.  Rinse under cool water and drain them.  Or, my more preferred method - do nothing.  Just throw the sprouts in raw.  They will be much healthier and more delicious that way anyway.

Okay, ready?  Toss everything together.  That's it.  Season to taste with salt, pepper, and more lemon juice, if desired.

Fettuccine with Pesto and Summer Squash

Okay all, here's a quick and easy recipe I think I came up with a while back, trying to find a use for some zucchini.  If you're like me, every summer you end up with too much of the stuff, and you're desperately trying to find a way to use it.  And you can only grill so much of it before you want to gag, so you start looking for new and creative ways to give it different flavors.  This one uses a pesto and ricotta cheese to give it both a sweet creamy texture as well as that pungent herb taste, and it comes together incredibly fast.  If you got really crazy you could make your own pasta or pesto, but for this one I'm using store bought ingredients (although they were both fresh, not dried or canned).  This dish is arguably similar to this one which I posted last year, but with a lot more flavor going on, and a few more ingredients.  It is also distinctly non-vegan, for those of you who live by that code, whereas the other one might have been.

Always on the lookout for good uses of squash - this one hit the mark

Fettuccine with Pesto and Summer Squash

• 1 pint (2 cups) fresh zucchini or other summer squash
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 pound fettuccine, dried, one 1/2 pound container of fresh fettuccine from the refrigerated section, or equivalent volume homemade pasta
• 4 ounces pesto
• 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Peel your tomatoes by blanching in a large pot of hot water (check here for detailed instructions).  Reserve the hot water for boiling your pasta - you can use that water again, making this more time efficient.  After shocking in ice water, coarsely chop tomatoes and set aside.  Chop the zucchini into bite-sized pieces, no larger than 3/4" to a side.  If using dried pasta, begin to boil now and follow package instructions to cook until just shy of al dente - maybe 30 seconds short of done.  If using fresh, read on.

Prep your ingredients - I used local mini squash, which have less bitter seeds

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the zucchini and cook until starting to brown, then shake / flip and cook other side.  When you flip the zucchini, add the onion, and stir around to saute lightly.  Saute the garlic for just a few seconds.  If using fresh pasta, add to pot of boiling water now, and cook for the 60-90 seconds recommended by the package, or whatever you feel comfortable with for homemade.  

Back in the skillet, lower heat to medium low, add the tomatoes with any juice that may have accumulated, and cook for 30 seconds.  Add the pesto and stir to combine, and keep warm.  Drain cooked pasta, reserving up to 1/4 cup of the cooking water, and add pasta to the sauce.  Stir to combine, adding water a little at a time as needed to reach the consistency you like.  The starchy water will help partially thicken the dish while creating more of a sauce, as well as help finish the pasta (which you cooked to NOT QUITE al dente, right?) by cooking it in this sauce.

Toss the sauteed vegetables with the pesto and partially cooked tomatoes.  Don't keep the heat on too high at this point or you'll lose some of the subtlety

To serve, plate pasta into 2-3 servings, and garnish each with 2 tbsp of ricotta cheese.  If you want to get crazy, add a chiffonade of basil threads (see Wikipedia for a nice picture of this).  Eat it, love it, feel good about yourself for eating healthy.