Herbed Stuffed Green Peppers

Ready for the oven

Like most dishes I prepare, this dish is a mosaic of miscellany from my kitchen. Peppers from our CSA. Our house bulk Italian sausage (half venison, half pork). A few tomatoes from the garden. Herbs from gardendwellers farm.

When I found myself with generous bunches of gardendwellers basil, oregano and parsley thanks to the North Dakota Ag Dept, my immediate instinct was Italian and tomato-based: spaghetti sauce, lasagna, pizza. Something about oregano especially yearns for a rich tomato sauce. But being short on tomatoes, many still green on the stem in the garden, and having just paged through Yotam Ottolenghi's gorgeous cookbook Jerusalem with its herb-laden dishes, I wondered if I could just make an herbed meat mixture for an off-the-cuff version of stuffed peppers.

The results: yup, it works. But I still wish I had a few more tomatoes.

Over the years, I've found the one thing that improves my cooking, the one thing I can do to take my palate to delicious heights, is embrace the freshest ingredients I can find. This means when presented with the option of fresh vs. packaged - i.e., fresh lemons vs. bottled lemon juice - I make a conscious effort to choose fresh, simply because it's going to taste better. As an added bonus, fresh ingredients are often prettier and more flexible in cooking: a garnish of grilled lemon slices alongside my walleye looks a lot better than a squirt of Realemon.

The same holds true for herbs. Jarred dried basil is a waste of money, however I cringe when I see the $3 price tag on the tiny plastic packages of fresh herbs in the grocery store. Thus, fresh herbs in the winter are an occasional treat (at least until I can finally develop a green thumb for growing herbs indoors), however when the herbs are lush in the garden, they go into everything, including our green peppers. At the end of the season, any remaining basil gets frozen as pesto, oregano gets dried and stored, and we look forward to the fragrant herbal summer that will eventually come again.

Herbed Stuffed Green Peppers
Different from your usual sauced-and-cheesed green peppers, this is a dish open to endless interpretation. This is my experimental version, based on what I had available in the pantry. Use whatever you have on hand. Leftover filling is great fried up with eggs as a kind of European fried rice. 

Green peppers, split lengthwise if small, or tops cut off if large, seeds scooped out
Bulk Italian sausage or other ground meat
Olive oil
Chopped onion
Tomatoes
Chopped veggies: peppers, kale, chard, corn
Fresh herbs: basil, oregano, parsley
2-3 c. cooked rice

In a large pot, add about 2 Tbls. olive oil and saute chopped onion until softened. Add sausage and brown. Add veggies and tomato and simmer until cooked through. Stir in rice and herbs. Place peppers in a baking dish and fill with meat and rice mixture. Cover with tin foil and bake at 375 degrees until peppers are softened, about 30 mins. If desired, sprinkle with cheese the last few minutes of baking.