Stuffed Green Peppers

Begin by chopping the garlic and onions into small pieces. Also chop the tomatoes into chunks that are 1/2 inch or so in size. Place these into a sauce pan with 1 tablespoon butter and saute on medium heat until onions begin to turn translucent, not letting the garlic, onions or tomatoes burn. Add the rice, parsley, thyme, mustard powder, salt, black pepper and water, stir, raise the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. After the rice mixture comes to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low and let the rice simmer until nearly fully cooked. The rice shouldn’t be crunchy, but also shouldn’t be fully cooked either.

While the rice is cooking, cut each pepper in half lengthwise and remove the insides. I like to prepare the pan I’m going to bake the veggies in by covering it with a sheet of aluminum foil—makes clean-up so much easier! Place the green peppers on the pan and pour a splash of balsamic vinegar into each pepper.

Spoon the rice mixture into each pepper half and bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes in the oven or until the peppers have begun to soften and the skins wrinkle. You don’t want to burn or brown these! A nice topping might be a shredded Parmesan cheese/breadcrumb mixture (you can allow the cheese to brown), which I would have added if I had either of those things.

(I received a text from my mama who informed me of the proper baking procedure above! But I’m leaving the note below because I think it has some interesting info in it about how I cooked this dish.)

A NOTE on baking: since I don’t have access to an oven, I’m not entire sure at what temperature you should bake these. I’m therefore going to leave that up to you and wish you luck in your endeavor. Until you figure out the proper temperature (or until someone tries this and tells me), you might want to keep a close eye on the oven! I “baked” mine in a Dutch oven—a smaller pan placed on a stone inside a larger pan and covered with a lid. This makes a type of oven, letting the hot air circulate and “bake” the goods inside. Peace Corps Volunteers have been baking with Dutch ovens for decades! See my blog (the link) for an image of the Dutch oven.