Stuffed bell pepper

stuffed pepper with minced meat and cheese with rice

One of the reasons moving here sure was the good weather, that, depending on the air pollution in the sky, gives us some really nice and sunny days, but more of the time it is just simply damp and hot (even the dirt in the sky can not hold back the heat and the humidity). While most of the time you can wear shorts all year round, there are two less hot months in the winter (around January till the end of February). But now, in the middle of the summer, it is really hot and damp, so much so, that we are looking for some light foods to eat in order to not get our stomachs too much worked up upon. One of my favorite summer dishes of all times was the stuffed bell pepper.Most of the ingredients are easy to find and so it makes a good and welcome addition for our table.


Filling

• 6 bell peppers
• 200 g minced pork
• 200 minced chicken
• 100 g grated cheese
• cup of boiled rice
• cup of diced onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste

Sauce

• 4 diced tomatoes
• 2 table spoon tomato concentrate
• 1/2 diced onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of oregano
• 1 teaspoon of thyme
• 1 teaspoon of capers
• 200 ml chicken stock
• Salt
• salt and pepper to taste

Put a flock of butter in a saucepan, when hot, fry off the onions until they are see through. Then add the tomato concentrate, and fry for a little while. After that, add the tomatoes and simmer for a while before adding the chicken stock and the rest of the spices. On a low flame simmer everything until it is reduced to a thicker kind of consistency of sauce.

In the meantime, wash and cut the bell peppers in half, or if you prefer, cut the top of the bell pepper off. Some people like to have half bell peppers stuffed, other prefer to have the whole bell pepper stuffed and used the top as a kind of a lid. Now clean the bell pepper on the inside and get rid of the seeds. Now, fry the onions until they light brown and mix them together with the other ingredients for the stuffing. Take the stuffing and put it in the bell pepper.

Stuffing the bell peppers

Close the bell peppers with the other half / with the lid and if needed, you can securely them with a thread if you want to avoid them falling apart during the cooking. If you used a thread, don't forget to cut if off after you cooked the bell pepper. Now fill an oven tray with the tomato stock, place the stuffed peppers on the bed of sauce and pop it in the over at 160 degrees Celsius where you let is simmer for about 45 minutes.