Stuffing more peppers

I've made stuffed peppers before, and it went really well. Yes, there were some shortcomings; namely, I couldn't taste the cheese. A friend believes that the only properly stuffed peppers are stuffed with cumin. Some variations are meat-heavy, while others are almost entirely rice. Point is, you can stuff just about anything into a pepper with a reasonable degree of success.

When I asked the Chief Taster what she wanted for dinner this week, she found this recipe online. I, in turn, dutifully bought what I needed, then started making changes through conscious effort, mistakes, and sheer laziness. This is my version.

"Mediterranean" Mushroom stuffed peppers (in case every recipe needs a name)
Olive oil
3/4 C chopped onion. I really don't know how much I used. I had half a large onion and used all of that. Whatever. Recipes are suggestions, dammit!
salt
pepper
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t garlic powder (I wanted to mince some real garlic for this, but I forgot)
8 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
8 oz fresh mushrooms
handful of parsley, chopped to bits
1 generous C long-grain brown rice (because I had slightly more than 1 C left). Her version soaks the rice for 15 minutes. I had mine in a bowl for closer to 20, but given the amount of liquid involved, I'm not sure the soaking is really necessary. Experiment at your discretion.
1/2 t paprika
8 oz can tomato sauce (she uses 3 T. What do you do with the rest of the can?)
3/4 C chicken broth
6 bell peppers, tops and ribs removed

• Heat the oil in a big, deep skillet. cook the onions in there until they turn translucent. Dump in the meat and season with salt, pepper, allspice, and garlic powder. Caveat: I only said "1/2 t" because she did. When I made it, I didn't measure the onion, salt, pepper, garlic, allspice, parsley, or paprika. If I did measure, it was all by eyeball, and I purposely overshot on all seasonings because I like strong flavors. Do what you will.
• Cook the beef. Stir in the mushrooms and chop at them a little with the spatula, because small pieces pack more easily into the peppers. Don't go too crazy--you still want to taste the mushroomy goodness (Cindy, I'm looking at you). Stir in the chickpeas and cook a couple minutes.
• Add the parsley, rice, paprika, and broth. I messed up a little here. Her recipe said "add the water," and I looked up and saw "3/4 C broth (or water)" in the ingredients, so I dumped in the broth. Then I saw "2 1/4 C water" listed a little higher. I left it alone with my extra tomato sauce, and nothing bad happened! Plus, I didn't have to simmer the damn thing another twenty minutes while all that liquid cooked off. Anyway. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20 minutes. You want the rice to be cooked.
• While that simmers, cut off the tops of the peppers and scrape out the insides. If you think this is tedious work, imagine scooping the glop out of a pumpkin so some thankless kid can have all the fun of carving it, and it will feel like a breeze (next month: pumpkin pie!) I cut down from the top on five of my peppers because I wanted them to hold together better, and contain more Stuff, but one of them had a nasty spot on the top, so I had to slice straight across for that one. It slimed me. It was gross.
• Stand the peppers up in a baking dish (my 11x7 was a perfect fit). Pack them full of tasty stuffing. (Has anyone tried stuffing stuffed peppers with stuffing? Thanksgiving style? The sausage kind? WHY THE HELL NOT??) Pour water into the baking dish (NOT into the peppers) 3/4 to 1 inch deep.
• Have you pre-heated the oven to 350F? No? Go back in time and do that.
• Tightly cover the baking dish with foil and bake for... I don't know. Half an hour? Everything inside the peppers is cooked, so you really only want to get the peppers softened. Do what you want.
• She suggested serving with Greek yogurt. We just had normal (plain) yogurt. It helped. I think sour cream would be fine, too.

One more note: She grills her peppers. I didn't. Because we only have a Foreman-style grill, and that just won't work. In the past, I boiled the peppers a little to soften and pre-cook them. This time I stuffed raw peppers and baked them 30 minutes. They were tender enough to eat, but firm enough that the Chief Taster used a knife to cut hers apart. I still had no complaints, and she reported high success on the recipe.

No food porn this week. I'm tired of making really good food in my fun-size kitchen and then getting shitty photos because there's only one crappy light fixture which casts shadows on EVERYTHING I DO. You want food porn, go look at the link. There's a dozen pictures of the same damn peppers. At least show the different steps, woman!

minty, fresh

Remember last week's pork kheema? I served this as a side, despite what the cookbook recommended.

Minted rice with tomato and sprouted beans
2 T olive oil
6 green onions, very finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 C cooked, cooled Basmati rice*
2 ripe plum tomatoes, finely chopped
8 oz mixed sprouted beans (you might find these near sprouts and fresh herbs at your grocery.  They're usually a mix of bean and lentil sprouts)
small handful of mint leaves
salt and pepper to taste

• Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet/wok/frying pan.  Add the green onions and garlic, and stir-fry them for 2-3 minutes.
• Add the cooked rice and stir-fry on high heat 3-4 minutes.  Add the tomatoes and beans, stir well, and cook another 2-3 minutes, until everything is warm.
• stir in the mint and season to taste.  Eat it now.  It's really good.

*I somehow managed to make about twice as much rice as I needed for this, despite following the instructions very carefully.  I set the rest aside and used as a base for some shrimp creole a few days later, made entirely from stuff I had leftover from other dishes.  It was the best fridge-cleaning meal I've made in a long time.

Nuts. ...and berries

Many years ago, when the Chief Taster brought her brother to Oregon for a visit, we were gathered in my kitchen one afternoon between our morning trip to the lava caves and an afternoon hike up Pilot Butte.  I was getting some pizza dough ready for dinner, and they were perusing their snacking options.  He opened a container of granola and started munching a handful, then asked where I got it.  "I made it."  "Seriously??  Dude, do you buy any food?"  "...I bought this flour.  Does that count?"

I had started making granola few months earlier.  I tried a couple recipes, and found one that I definitely didn't like.  The other one was close, and I adjusted it a couple times until I had it where I liked it.  Years later, I changed it again, and I think I'm finally closing in on a really good formula.  This is the current iteration.

Ryan's Crunchy Granola (v.3)
4 C oats
1/2 C chopped almonds
1/2 C coarse chopped pecans
1/2 C dried cherries
1/2 C dried cranberries
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt
1/3 C oil
1/3 C honey
1/2 C brown sugar

• Combine the first five ingredients in a large bowl.  Mix it up with your hands; it's more fun that way.
• Combine remaining ingredients in a small saucepan over med-low heat.  Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then stir into the oat mixture.  Turn off the stove, too.
• Mix well to coat the oat mixture thoroughly, then spread on a baking sheet (you may need two, but I usually manage with one these days.) and bake at 375F for half an hour, removing from oven to stir every 8-10 minutes.  Your baking time may vary; get it nicely browned, but not burnt.  Some of the dried fruit may swell a bit.  That's fine, too.

The above recipe is just a starting point.  If I've been making it over and over for a while (as I did in Oregon), I'll change things a little, but usually sticking with a cup of nuts and a cup of fruit, but I personally don't like walnuts in this recipe, even though I often put them in cookies and other food.  Do what you want.

A blatant attempt at plagiarism

The Chief Taster will, whenever the opportunity presents itself, order the Chicken and Wild Rice Soup at Panera.  It's not a difficult pattern to discern, if you spend as much time in line behind her at Panera as I do.  When I found a Wild Rice Soup recipe in Betty Crocker's Culinary Compendium, I decided it couldn't be that hard to adapt it in an attempt to copy one of the Chief Taster's chief tastes.  Even if I hadn't actually had that particular soup in many years.

Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice Soup
1/4 C butter
3/4 lb (I don't remember exactly how much I used, but long after faking my through it, I saw a note in the cookbook to use "4 Cups" cooked chicken for the meaty version) chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
4 mediums stalks celery, sliced (2 C)
2 medium carrots, coarsely shredded (2 C.  When I see "coarsely shredded" applied to carrots, I peel them, then turn back to my ingredient bowl and keep using the peeler to whittle the carrot to nothing, eating the stumps when they get too small to hold without losing bits of my fingers to the peeler)
1 large onion, chopped (1 C)
1 C chopped green bell pepper
1/4 C plus 2 T flour
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3 C cooked wild rice (be sure to cook it!)
2 C water
2 cans (10.5 oz each) condensed chicken broth
3 C half and half
2/3 C slivered almonds, toasted (optional)
1/2 C chopped fresh parsley

I added one or two of Dad's Mystery Peppers to this, too, but don't tell the Chief Taster.

• In 4-qt saucepan or Dutch oven, melt butter over medium-high heat.  Add chicken and cook until no longer pink.  Add veggies and cook about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until crisp-tender.
• Stir in flour, salt, and pepper.  Stir in wild rice, water, and broth (I couldn't find cans of condensed chicken broth, so I just made broth with bouillon and omitted the extra water).  Heat to boiling, reduce heat, cover and simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Remember those slivered almonds?  If you want them toasted, toss them in a small, heavy skillet (I used a little cast iron skillet, but I'm partial to my Lodge cookware whenever applicable) over medium-high heat.  Give the pan a shake and flip frequently to prevent burning.  When the almonds are turning golden brown, remove from heat, but keep shaking the pan occasionally, because the skillet is still hot, and the almonds will continue to cook until the skillet cools.
• Stir in half and half, almonds, and parsley.  Heat just until hot, but do not boil.

Next time, I might try this in a bread bowl.

My notes recommend adding croutons, but toast or crackers would do just as well.  I like that crunch, but the soup was pretty good without it, too.

Barley-Millet Skillet

If you can find a copy of the Sacajawea Cookbook (at the time I wrote this post, Powell's had two copies left), and you like big game and grains, it's an Off Belay Cafe-endorsed investment.  On the one hand, some of the dishes are a laughable, because so many of them--even in the "vegetables" section--open with "1 pound of elk/bison/venison/beef.  A friend, leafing through while I made the Barley Millet Skillet for the first time, noticed that there is one recipe which appears twice in the book, with different names, but with identical ingredients and procedure.  On the other hand, I've never made anything from this cookbook and reflected later that I feel no need to ever make it again.  It's all good.  Maybe because most of it starts with a pound of meat, but not necessarily.

I like this dish as an all-purpose side because it's full of vegetables and grains, and pairs well with everything to which I've introduced it.  Plus, it's more interesting than just another serving of rice, and the name rhymes, so it's fun to say.  Go ahead, try it!  I'll wait here.

I bought our barley and millet bulk, and it wasn't until after I'd made this the first time that we realized that the "quick-cooking barley" specified in the recipe might be something we could have found in a box elsewhere in the store.  By then, we'd already figured out how to fake our way through with what we had, and we were happy with the results, so I bought bulk the next time we wanted it, too.  Here's the catch: barley cooks in about 45 minutes.  Millet only takes 15.  Solution: I toasted the barley in the skillet first, then dumped it into the simmering broth to cook while I toasted the millet.  When my timer was down to about fifteen minutes, I added the millet.  Stir well with this addition.  I forgot to stir it once when I was too busy and distracted in the kitchen, and the millet was a little too crunchy.  While the grains kept each other company, I stir-fried the veggies.

Barley, toasting in a big skillet.  You may hear little pops, like tiny popcorn.  That's normal, but remember to stir it so you don't get a bunch of burnt grain.

Toasting millet.  Use just a little olive oil for both grains.  It will cook better, and make it easier to scrape everything into the broth later.

Carrots, bell pepper, and red onion.  This is a slight diversion from the recipe, because these are the veggies I had.  That's the nice thing about recipes; they're usually pretty flexible.  This is also good with broccoli or celery.

Blackened catfish is in the background; we'll talk about that next week.

When the grain is done cooking, it will probably have absorbed all the broth.  Then you can dump it into the skillet with the veggies and let everybody get warm and cozy together before you lean out the kitchen door and bellow, "come gitcho vittles!"