Filling in the details
Fresh peppers, hot and spicy, sweet and crunchy, are the ultimate quick change artists. I roast poblanos and jalapenos for Mexican-style rajas, puree red and orange bells into soups and sauces, dice green bells and Anaheims for omelets and gingerly tuck habaneros into salsa.
When the farmers market baskets overflow with varieties not regularly found at the supermarket, I stock up. Long skinny shishito and squat padron peppers make fantastic seared finger foods. Red poblanos, slender cubanelles and yellow sweet bells prove perfect for stuffing.
Fortunately, fresh peppers keep for several weeks in the refrigerator. Simply pat dry and store unwrapped in the crisper drawer. Do not seal them in plastic as that promotes molding. If I have freezer space, I roast both sweet and hot peppers under the broiler to char the skin, then tuck the cooled specimens into freezer bags. I can peel and seed them after thawing.
On more than one occasion, stuffed peppers have disappointed: Undercooked peppers, crunchy rice and bland fillings. MooseAKa, 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.
I didn’t know stuffed-pepper soup was a thing until I encountered it at a family restaurant in Indiana. Turns out, plenty of versions populate the internet. I float tiny flavor-packed meatballs of beef and Italian sausage in the chunky soup bolstered by basmati rice. Shower each serving with fresh herbs, and you will be happy.
A cast-iron skillet full of seared finger-size peppers likewise makes folks smile. No need to worry about too much heat — usually only one in 20 shishito or padron peppers is killer hot. Well worth the risk, if you ask me.