Stuffed peppers worth it

Take advantage of market bounty

peel and seed them after thawing.

On more than one occasion, stuffed peppers have disappointed: undercooked peppers, crunchy rice and bland fillings. Moose-AKa, a Denali, Alaska, restaurant featuring Serbian specialties, got it perfectly right on a recent visit. The long, sweet red pepper, stuffed fat with spicy beef and basmati rice on a pool of tomato sauce, rekindled our interest.

At home, I start with the tomato sauce that will sit under the peppers as they cook. I love to use imported boxed tomatoes (free of citric acid and calcium chloride) for a bright-tasting sauce ready in less than 30 minutes. A touch of ground coriander and olive oil marry this sauce nicely to the sweet peppers. For a moister filling, I pool a little of the sauce over the top of the stuffed pepper before baking.

Ground beef, cooked with onions, dried currants and sweet spices, forms the base for a flavorful filling. Taking no chances on crunchy rice, I opt for cooked long-grain basmati. It’s a piece of cake to cook rice in the rice cooker. By the time the sauce, filling and peppers are ready, so is the rice. Adding warm rice to the beef means it’ll absorb flavors beautifully.