Sunday's stuffing

We had a couple of slightly aging peppers in the fridge that I was keen to use up but as we were expecting a big delivery from the online supermarket on Monday so I didn't want to make anything for lunch that required the acquisition of any more ingredients. Unfortunately I discovered that we had no onions left. This was too restrictive but I would just pop to the shop quickly, I had to go out to buy tarpaulin anyway. Popping to the shop quickly didn't happen – it was absolute mayhem – but I was successful in acquiring an onion so lunch could proceed.

I decided to do stuffed peppers. Rather than bother with any sort of recipe I just made it up as I went along. One of the things that I sometimes don't like about stuffed peppers is when the peppers are crunchy. Crunchy peppers are for salads and dips, otherwise they should be soft and sweet. So I halved (lengthways) a yellow and an orange pepper, covered in boiling water and blasted in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

While they cooled I worked on the filling; this was going to be couscous based. I started by chopping and sweating my hard acquired onion, still unsure of what the rest of the filling was going to be like. I was tempted to go for my usual “camping” couscous but I'm trying to reduce the rate at which we get through tinned tomatoes. So for savouriness and protein I added a load of vegetarian mince to the pan – about as twice as much by volume as the onion. I cooked that for about 10 minutes and then tipped in the couscous, about the same amount by volume as the onion plus the mince, plus some veg stock powder and black pepper.

I have never quite recovered from a couscous incident when I was a student (my mum had assured me that you can't go wrong) in which I added too much water, so tried to correct the balance by adding more couscous, then it was too dry so in went more water. And so on until I had got through a whole packet of couscous and all I had was a gelatinous mess, too much for my jug and thus all over the work surface too. Since then I have been very careful with couscous, either being very precise with my measuring or adding water just a very little at a time. Today I went for the second of these techniques and added just a tablespoon or so of boiling water to the pan at a time. It was successful and I had lovely fluffy couscous.

Now to fill the peppers. I laid out the pepper halves in a deep pan and half filled each of them with the couscous mixture (it became apparent that I had far more filling than was strictly needed). Then I put on a sprinkling of feta (a bit of spontaneous cheese addition was sure to improve the whole thing) and then topped off with more filling. I could have saved the rest of the filling for another day but wasn't really in the mood for that so poured the rest of it around the peppers. Now I thought about, this would serve to stabilise the peppers in the pan.

Somehow it didn't seem finished. I keep coming across breadcrumbs in the freezer and thought that adding some as a topping would add a bit of interest in the texture. (I am mainly saving these breadcrumbs from a bargain loaf of bread in the Spring to make Christmas puddings, but the consensus is that this should be done in November). I augmented the breadcrumbs with a bit more spontaneous cheese (just a little grate of parmesan this time) and more black pepper, sprinkled over the stuffed peppers / loose couscous and put it all in the oven at 180ºC. Having never made this before I had no idea how long it would take, but everything was pre-cooked so burning was the main risk. I took it out when the top had started to crisp up nicely.

Really the stuffed peppers should have been served with a lovely crisp green salad, but we had nothing suitable from which to assemble this so I just served them with extra of the filling. They were really nice. The microwaving of the peppers had really done the trick to make them nice and soft, the filling tasted just good and the spontaneous cheese additions did indeed improve the whole thing. It would be nice with a few toasted pine nuts too.