Stuffed Green Peppers

Hello everybody,

Here we are with another dish which is world famous and is cooked more or less similar in different countries. This is the first in a series of stuffed vegetable recipes I will put here, mainly known as ‘dolma’ in the cuisines of former Ottoman Empire including Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Armenia and the Middle East.

You can find recipes for stuffed courgettes, aubergine, tomatoes and squash blossoms in time in this blog. (I am not sure I can find them in England but I am hopelessly optimistic:)

Let’s begin with stuffed bell peppers. There are two ways of cooking, with minced meat – here I will use soya mince- or with rice, you eat the first one with yoghurt, the latter, cold and with lemon juice at the top of it. You can find the olive oil version later on.

I would like to mention the type of green pepper, as they are not the normal ones from sainsbury’s or tesco! In London the green bell peppers are too big and thick – I think they are American- but the ones I used are from TFC- Turkish Food Centre, they are smaller and flavorsome. But as a last resort, I use the big ones of course!

Here we go:

7 – 8 bell peppers
200 gr of soya mince (original recipe is with minced meat)
1 glass full of rice
1 onion
2 medium size tomatoes
tomato or pepper paste (preferably spicy or use chilli paprika instead)
half a bunch of flat parsley
blackpepper
salt
2- 3 spoonful of olive oil

1. Wash the peppers and cut the heads and clean the seeds.
2. Heat some water and pour some over the rice to soak.
3. Chop the onions and parsley and mix them well with olive oil, soya mince or minced meat, tomato paste in a bowl, add some, paprika, salt and black pepper to season.
4. Add the rice to this mixture, stir well.
5. Stuff the peppers with this mixture, leave approximately two cm gap at the top.
6. Slice the tomatoes and put them at the top of each pepper as a cap.
7. Place the peppers in a pan and pour two or three glasses of water, cover the top and cook it on a low heat. Check the softness of the peppers with a fork, if they are not cooked after half an hour, leave them longer.

Stuffed peppers are ready! Enjoy them with a spoonful of plain yoghurt!