Stuffed Bell Peppers

Do you ever get tired of the same ol' stuffing, night after night after night? Although I think you could stuff a bell pepper with just about anything and it would be good, tonight I stuffed ours with a ground pork/ground beef mixture and used a wild rice mix instead of white rice. If there were no children around here I would have used a spicy ground pork, but since I was bracing myself for the mutiny that has become a dinner ritual, I just used mild. In the past I have used this recipe Dad's Stuffed Bell Peppers and substituted leftover baked chicken for the ground beef; it was a light, yet filling dish. Tonight I switched things up again because you should never get bored with your stuffer.


Stuffed Bell Peppers


4 large peppers, halved lengthwise and insides removed

1/2 pound ground pork, mild or spicy
3/4 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 cup diced tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 cup lite sour cream
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice mix (You can substitute brown rice. I added a teaspoon of beef
bouillon granules to the rice water)
1/2 cup ketchup
2 shakes Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup water

1. Saute pork, beef, onion and garlic until meat is cooked and onions are transparent. Add salt, pepper and garlic powder. Drain fat.

2. Add rice, tomatoes, oregano, sour cream and cheese. Mix well. Stuff into peppers.

3. Combine ketchup, Worcestershire and water in small bowl. Mix and pour over filled peppers.

4. Place peppers in oven pan and add about 1/4 cup of water to the baking dish, cover dish with aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for 5 -10 more minutes.

Notes: Since the wild rice mix doesn't absorb juices as easily as white rice, if you can make the filling the night before the flavors have a better chance of blending. I wonder if you could put the filling ingredients in the crock pot in the morning and stuff the peppers right before dinner? Hummm? Maybe next time.

Above, peppers begging to be stuffed.

This is my way of trying to stop the revolt before it begins. Since I do not believe in fixing kids their own separate "kid meal", this is my way of... well... it's my way of... of fixing them their own separate meal without admitting it! They get stuffed peppers minus the peppers and minus the onions plus cheese on top. And I think I will stick to my original plan and say that I will NOT fix my kids their own separate meals from now on because as doctored-up as their version was, they still pitched fits! So my first platform was correct: Never fix kids their own special kid-meal.

Here are a few other pepper recipes you may like to try:
Paula Deen's Stuffed Red Peppers (comes with a side of butter and a Krispy Kreme glaze)

Sweet Stuffed Bell Pepper Soup

Smoke Roasted Stuffed Bell Peppers

Pot Stickers

This evening our visitors have left our home to visit the home of someone else. I have been dying to make something interesting and add something new to my cooking repertoire and since the audience was gone, I had plenty of room to make a fool of myself alone in the kitchen. So tonight for my eating pleasure and my children's disgust I made Pot Stickers.

I have always enjoyed eating Pot Stickers - the kind you get in the frozen food section of Wal-Mart have suited me well. Oddly enough it wasn't until I actually made them tonight that I figured out just why they are called Pot Stickers. Indeed, they do stick to the pot and the crisp bottoms make them all the tastier!

Many of these ingredients are also used in my Steak & Portobellos with Sweet Soy Ginger Sauce so if you have them on hand you may as well make both recipes...eventually...before the ingredients go bad...within a year or two.

Pot Stickers
Potstickers:
1 cup bok choy, finely chopped (in my case, sort of finely chopped)
1/3 green onions, chopped
1 T. low sodium soy sauce
1 t. salt
2 t. fresh ginger, minced (in my case, sort of fresh ginger)
1 t. grated lemon rind
1 t. dark sesame oil
1/2 pound pork sausage

24-36 wonton wrappers
3-4 T. vegetable oil
1-1 1/2 cups water

Sauce:
5 T. seasoned rice vinegar
1/4 c. low sodium soy sauce
1 T. honey

Combine bok choy and next 7 ingredients (through the sausage) and mix well.

Take one wonton wrapper and moisten edges by lightly brushing with water. Spoon 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons pork mixture into center of wrapper. Bring 2 opposite ends together and pinch to seal. Then bring remaining ends together to seal and pinch all 4 edges together. Set aside and continue.

Heat 1 T. oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Careful to not crowd pan, fill with pot stickers. Cook 2 minutes until bottoms are golden. Add 1/2 cup water to pan, cover and cook 4 minutes. Uncover and cook 3 minutes or until liquid evaporates.

Repeat procedure until all pot stickers are cooked and the house smells like a Chinese restaurant.

Prepare sauce by mixing ingrediants and serve alongside the delicious Pot Stickers.

Apple Cranberry Pork Pinwheels

Do you need an impressive dinner that will wow your husband's boss, make an "outlaw" an inlaw or trick the disapproving mothers in the Mom's Club into thinking you belong in their exclusive snotty organization? If so, visit Martha Stewart's blog; I'm sure she has a ton of ideas for you.

If you need something that tastes really good, looks respectable and pleases YOU deeply, look no further. This is a tried and true recipe that I added to my dinner rotation a few months ago. In the future I plan on stuffing this CENTER CUT pork loin with some other ingredients, but for now, this chutney filling is oh so good. It has a little sweetness and a little sourness; just like me!

I serve the Apple Cranberry Pork Pinwheels with baked sweet potatoes and a small salad. You serve it however you like, but please, do yourself a favor and just serve it.

Apple Cranberry Pork Pinwheels
This recipe is my adaptation of Elise Bauer’s adaptation of a Cook’s Illustrated Recipe (basically it’s a third party recipe)

Chutney Filling

1 cup orange juice or apple juice

1/2 cup cider vinegar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 Tbsp onion, grated

1 1/2 cups dried apples (I call this the fruit of my loin)

1/2 cup dried cranberries (this is the fruit of my loin too)

1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger

½ t. ground mustard (or a few squirts of yellow mustard will work)

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pork Roast

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 1/2 pound boneless center-cut pork loin roast (short and wide - about 7-8 inches long and 4-5 inches wide). I don’t know my cuts of meat, but I think this “center cut” part is important because I have twice NOT purchased the “center cut” version and twice been very disappointed because it is two small pieces of pork wrapped together to look like one big one and thus making it impossible to make this beautiful dish beautiful. So buy the CENTER CUT pork roast.

1. Put the small children down for a nap, as you are about to handle raw meat. You never know what they will do while you have salmonella hands from wrangling raw pork. My luck is someone will snort a Cheerio up his/her nose and need some sort of medical attention while I stand there, hands held up in the air, and say, “I have raw meat hands, honey. You are going to have to take care of it alone. Just blow your nose. Blow. Come on now, blow harder. Dang it, I am about fed up with you. Would you just give it a good blow already!” Note: The coaxing it takes to get kids in bed is the most challenging part of this recipe. Put the pork roast in the freezer for 30 minutes to make it easier to cut.

2. Bring all the filling ingredients to simmer in medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook until apples are very soft, about 20 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, reserving the liquid. Use a rubber spatula to press against the apple mixture in the sieve to extract as much liquid out as possible. Pulse apple mixture in food processor, about fifteen 1-second pulses (or just chop it up small like I do). Set aside. Since I usually start dinner when the baby is napping around 2:00, I stop here and finish reduction right before I serve dinner. So skip to step 3 for now and come back to step 2 when the roast is almost ready to serve. Return liquid to saucepan and simmer over medium-high heat until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, set aside and reserve this liquid for use as a glaze.

3. You will be "double-butterflying" the pork roast. Lay the roast down, fat side up. Insert the knife into the roast 1/2-inch horizontally from the bottom of the roast, along the long side of the roast. Make a long cut along the bottom of the roast, stopping 1/2 inch before the edge of the roast. Click here to see Elise’s demonstration double-butterflying. You can also see her version of this recipe, but I must say it is lacking because nowhere does she mention putting her kids down for naps, salmonella hands or cheerios in one’s nose. I feel that my minor changes have made all the difference in the final outcome of the dish.

4. Season the inside of the roast well with salt and pepper. Spread out the filling on the roast, leaving a 1/2-inch border from the edges. Starting with the short side of the roast, roll it up very tightly. Secure with kitchen twine at 1-inch intervals. Season the outside of the roast generously with salt and pepper. Since Wal-mart is hiding the kitchen twine these days I got creative recently. I made aluminum foil “ropes” and wrapped a few around the loin. Granted they aren’t as pretty as twine, but they worked.

5. Place roast on a rack in a roasting pan, put in 350 degree preheated oven, on the middle rack. Cook for 45 to 60 minutes, until the internal temperature of the roast is 160 degrees.

6. When roast is almost ready, return to step 2 and reduce your glaze.

7. Brush roast with half of the glaze and cook for 5 minutes longer. Remove the roast from the oven or grill. Place it on a cutting board. Tent it with foil to rest and keep warm for 15 minutes before slicing.

8. Slice into 1/2-inch wide pieces, removing the cooking twine (or aluminum foil home made ropes) as you cut the roast. Serve with remaining glaze.

Serves 6-8 normal people (or 2 ravenous adults)

And one last note: Pat slow smoked the pork roast with some wood chips a few weeks ago . The memory make me speechless. Umm Umm Good! Man, that guy sure knows how to please a woman!

Kid Note: They like the meat, but the looks of the chutney discourages them. Maybe if you put the pinwheel on a stick and call it a lollipop they'll eat it? But probably not.