The Roasted Peppers Weekend
The Diners decided it was time to have the Great Roast Pepper Weekend. About a month ago, we agreed to all cook the same meal on the last weekend in March. I dont know about anyone else, but as I cooked this meal, I thought of all the other diners on this thread and wondered if they were having as much fun or having the same experience of holding each diner in their thoughts.
My starting ingredients:
- Red Bell Peppers - 4, with the top and seeds cleaned out
- Cooked rice; I started with 1 cup of uncooked rice
- Carrots - 3, diced
- Celery - 3 stalks, diced
- Leek - 1 stalk, diced
- Salt, pepper and Mexican chilli powder - to taste (not shown)
- Tomato sauce - pasata style, 1 bottle (not shown)
- For the meat lovers - mince beef, 300 g
- For the meat lovers - thyme
- For the vegetarian - 4 bean mix, 1 tin
- For the vegetarian - dill (not shown)
- Oil - 3 tablespoons (not shown)
Fry the leek in a large frying pan with some oil for 3 - 4 minutes.
Add the diced carrot and celery and fry for another 3 - 4 minutes.
Add the cooked rice to the pan.
After stirring the rice into the mix, season with salt, pepper and the Mexican chilli powder.
I have the challenge of having to make a meal for the vegetarian and for the meat lovers in the family. So, this formed the basis of the core ingredients for the two versions.
I started on the meat version first. In the frying pan, heat up some oil and fry the meat for a couple of minutes.
Add some tomato pasata and cook for 4 - 5 minutes.
Season with the thyme and salt.
Add half of the core ingredients to the meat sauce.
Mix well and use it to stuff two of the peppers.
For the vegetarian version, I heated the beans in the frying pan.
Add some tomato pasata, dill and cook for about 3 minutes.
Add the remaining core ingredients to the bean sauce.
Mix well and use this to stuff the other 2 peppers.
Place the peppers into a preheated oven; and cook for 50 - 60 minutes at 180 C.
My dinner! I served the meat pepper with a garden salad.
My DH's dinner.

