Classic Italian Seasonings

For the chili, I bought green peppers from Produce Junction. I love Produce Junction, however they tend to overkill on the portions. So while I only need 1 or 2 green peppers for the chili, I got 7. What the heck am I supposed to do with 6 left over peppers? Make stuffed peppers, obviously:) My mom's advice for this endeavor was to use the classic Italian seasonings that make pretty much anything tase ah-ma-zing! They are: salt, pepper, parsley, onion, garlic, parmesan cheese! Yummy! I looked at the food network, then cooking light, and combined all 3 recipes and here you have my Quasi-Involved Stuffed Peppers (they are quasi-involved cause they aren't super complicated to make, but they do take a minute to do).

Das Ingredients:

-6 medium sized green peppers (regular green ones are fine, Italian green peppers are milder aka gentler on the old stomach, but really you can use any kind of pepper, red, yellow... whatever!)

- 4 cloves garlic (with garlic I usually just put in however much I feel like tasting, which is usually a LOT!)

-1 medium onion chopped (a whole onion if you like it oniony; 3/4c if you want to be exact/less oniony)

-1 & 1/2 c chopped mushrooms (baby portobellos were on sale so that's what I used)

-14 oz chopped tomatoes (1 & 3/4c). You can use canned, or fresh. I used my mom's fresh garden tomatoes (gotta give props to the momma!)

-6 Green olives chopped, I used stuffed Manzanilla olives (you know, the ones in the jar with the little red thing in the middle) and I used 6, one for each pepper!

-2 & 1/2 c cooked rice (I used brown, and made it in our fabulous rice cooker which was given to us my Mary Ellen!)

-1 or 2 eggs

-1 c chopped parsley

- 1/4 c parmesan cheese (I totally used 1/2 c hehe)

-Salt

-Pepper

-1 to 2 tbsp olive oil

How To:

-Preheat the oven to 350

-Put a pot of water on to boil (I am not good at amounts, but enough water to submerge 6 peppers:)

-Heat olive oil in a pan. Saute the onion for 3-5 min, then add the minced garlic and chopped mushrooms, cook for another 3-5, then add the parsley for about 2 min. Remove from heat and put in a large mixing bowl. Add the tomatoes, rice, egg (I just used 1), salt, pepper, parmesan cheese, green olives.

-Remove the tops from the green peppers (save the good parts for snacking!) and the insides/seeds.

-Blanch (yeah that's right, a legit cooking term! Which I learned means to boil for a hot sec so that the veggie gets a little soft) the peppers in you now boiling pot o water for 5 minutes. Seriously, no longer than 5 min, you don't want them to get too soft. Drain and place the peppers in a 13x9 in baking dish (I only have a huge backing dish, which you can see in my pictures hehe).

-Stuff the peppers with the rice mixture. Don't over stuff cause the egg will expand a little and then you will have sploded green peppers, as opposed to the desired stuffed peppers.

-Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top (or if you want to make them real good use a lil mozzarella cheese!)

-Bake for 15-20 minutes

-Mangia!

Comments:

These proportions made a TON of stuffing for the size peppers I had. So I put the rest in a smaller baking dish, topped with some zucchini and sprinkled a lil more parmesan cheese on top and baked. Yummy:)

Blanching for 5 minutes might be a little long, my peppers got a little soft, not terrible, but pretty soft, so I would go with 3 minutes next time.

And I love me some mushrooms, so next time I might add a little more of those and a little less rice.

Over all this turned out really good!