Stuffed Green Peppers

On New Year's Eve, Bob decided to become a vegetarian for the new year, sort of as a joke. After being teased by my family that he wouldn't be able to do it, he became determined to stick with it. Five days and four vegetarian dinners later, he headed to Portillo's for a Maxwell St. Polish Sausage. C'est la vie! His breaking point was the vegetarian curry dish he prepared using Garbanzo beans, spinach, and tofu . . . One good thing that did come out of this phase was this recipe for Stuffed Green Peppers. I had seen it on Aggie's Kitchen blog and thought this was the perfect opportunity to fit it in to our meal schedule. We both really enjoyed this dinner. Probably my favorite part was the tomato sauce. Our peppers got really soft, so much of the pepper flavor leached into the sauce during baking and produced this wonderfully spiced flavor. We will make these again, even though Bob is back to his regularly scheduled meat eating.

I just realized that we changed this recipe a bit, so I'll just type what we made and at the bottom provide the link to the original recipe (which includes ground meat and mushrooms).

Stuffed Green Peppers

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked brown rice

1 can chicken broth

3 large green peppers, all around the same size so they cook evenly

1 large onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 regular cans of Diced Italian Seasoned Tomatoes

1 large can of Tomato Sauce

large pinch of dried basil (small palmful)

large pinch of oregano (small palmful)

large pinch of dried thyme (small palmful)

salt and pepper

shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400F.

1. Cook rice: bring can of chicken broth to boil, add 1 cup rice, bring back to boil and then turn the temperature all the way down to let simmer, cover tightly with lid and leave alone for about 30 minutes. Don't take the lid off during cook time.

2. Prepare the peppers: cut the tops of peppers off so there is a hole, remove ribs and seed on the inside, wash them. In deep baking dish, line them up. Sprinkle salt and pepper inside peppers before filling them.

3. For filling, saute chopped onion and minced garlic in some olive oil in a large skillet. Season with salt and pepper. When soft, season with thyme, basil and oregano. Add 2 cans of diced tomatoes and cook through. When rice is done, add rice to skillet and mix everything together. Spoon filling into each pepper.

4. To bake, pour a large can of tomato sauce all over peppers. Add water to leftover sauce in can (about 1/4 of the can), swirl around to get all the sauce then add to the bottom of the baking dish. Wrap tightly with foil or place lid on top. Bake for about an hour, until peppers are soft. Take off foil, add mozzarella cheese, bake another 20 minutes to finish off and melt cheese.

Source: Adapted from Aggie's Kitchen