Stuffed peppers a l'olive

Stuffed Peppers a l'olive

This recipe was found under the V tab for vegetables. 

I've only had a few stuffed peppers in my life and usually they feature sausage or ground beef. When I saw this recipe and that it is vegetarian I knew I had to give it a try. The ingredients are simple, but make sure you have a stale loaf of bread. If you don't have one laying around you can sometimes find day old bread (or few days old) at grocery stores. Also, don't worry about the color of the pepper. The recipe calls for green, but I used red because they were available at the store. 

Stuffed peppers a l’olive

6 Large green peppers

1 Loaf stale white bread (soaked in water)

1 Can diced black olives

3 Eggs

2 Sprigs fresh parsley, chopped

¼ Teaspoon minced garlic

½ Teaspoon oregano

1 Tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

2 Cans tomato sauce

½ Cup oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Remove core from peppers- wash, drain, set aside. Squeeze wet bread

until dry- put in bowl, add other ingredients including water from black

olives. Mix well.

2. Fill each pepper to top. Put in shallow pan with oil. Bake at 450 degrees

until golden brown. Remove from oven, add tomato sauce, oregano, salt,

pepper to taste.

3. Bake in moderate oven, 350 degrees, for 20 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

4. Serves six.

This recipe has a few confusing aspects such as telling  you to add all the ingredients to the mixture that goes into the pepper, but then telling you to add the tomato sauce and oregano to the top. It also never tells you to add the cheese! I just tried to figure it out myself...

The first thing you'll need to do is set your oven to 450 degrees and soak your bread. The recipe doesn't tell you to cut up the bread, but it is much easier to work with if you do. 

Once the bread is cut up and put into a bowl you will need to fill the bowl with water and let the bread sit until you add it to the pepper mixture. 

When your bread is put aside go ahead and wash the outside of each pepper. This recipe calls for six peppers, but I cut it in half knowing we wouldn't eat that many. Once the peppers have been washed you will need to cut the stems out by cutting a circle around it and pulling it out:

When you pull the stem out of the pepper you will see the seeds insides. To get these out just use your fingers and then run water in them until all the seeds are gone. 

When all of your peppers are ready to be stuffed they should look like this:

Go ahead and squeeze the water out of the bread and place it in a dry bowl.

This is the tricky part; the recipe tells you to add the other ingredients, but which ones?! I just added everything from the left section since the right side of the ingredient list looked like it should be going on top later in the recipe. So I started by cutting up the black olives. 

When the olives are a good size you can go ahead and add them and some of the liquid from the can to the bread in the bowl. 

Next I added the eggs to the bowl. 

Next came the parsley. Unfortunately I didn't have any fresh parsley on hand so I used the dried flakes. You can use whatever you have available. 

The recipe only calls for 1/4 teaspoon of garlic, but I like a lot of garlic so I added about 3 finely chopped cloves. 

Place the garlic into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients and begin mixing it all together. 

When the mixture is ready it will be pretty gooey. 

Go ahead and add the mixture to each pepper. You can use your hands for this part, but I found it easier to use a regular spoon to pack the stuffing in each one.  

When t he peppers are ready to be cooked they should be stuffed to the top of the pepper. Be sure to push the stuffing down to be sure there aren't any air pockets left. 

Place the peppers in a shallow pan for cooking. Make sure the pan is okay for use in the oven. 

When your peppers are positioned in the pan go ahead and add the olive oil to the bottom of the pan. This will help to brown the bottoms of the peppers.

When your peppers are safely in the pan with the oil go ahead and put them in your preheated oven. You will have to keep an eye on them since the recipe doesn't give you a specific time to cook them. They will be browned on the top when they are ready. Mine took about 30 minutes. 

When the tops of the bread and peppers are browned go ahead and take them out of the oven. You will then add the tomato sauce, oregano, salt, and pepper to the tops. You will also need to turn your oven down to 350 degrees. 

The recipe doesn't let you know when to put the cheese on the peppers, but you can either wait to put it on once they are cooked or go ahead and add it to the top half way through the next cooking section. When the tomato sauce is added to the peppers go ahead and put them in the oven for cooking for another 20 minutes. When they are done they should look like this:

I completely forgot the cheese, but you can add it now if you'd like. Then go ahead and dig in! 

The recipe says you can eat them hot or cold, but I definitely recommend eating them when they're hot. Just be careful not to burn yourself! 

As you can probably see from the picture above the stuffing for the peppers has the consistency of mush. If you are going to make this recipe I highly recommend NOT soaking the bread. With the olive juice and eggs in the stuffing there's not need to soak the bread and it just makes the stuffing rather revolting! 

Unfortunately I gave this recipe a 1 out of 5 on the yummy scale !

You can definitely try making these I would just be sure you tweak them a little so they don't end up mushy inside. Good luck! 

Peach Cobbler

Peach Cobbler 

This recipe was found under the D tab for dessert. 

I'm not sure of the origins of this recipe since my Mom copied it from someone. The recipe looks like it was written quickly since half of the ingredients are listed within the instructions. When I post it below I will be sure to give you all of the ingredients first to avoid confusion. I love fruit in desserts so I knew I had to give this one a try. Peaches aren't exactly in season in January so I used bottled ones. Feel free to use frozen or canned peaches. If you use frozen ones be sure they are thawed before you use them. Also, the recipe only makes 2 servings so I doubled it when I made it. Here we go! 

Peach Cobbler

2 Tsp cornstarch

4 Tbsp Sugar

¼ Cup water

1 ½ Cup sliced peaches

1/8 Tsp cinnamon

1 ½ Tsp lemon juice

½ Cup flour

1 ½ Tsp sugar

¾ Tsp baking powder

Salt

2 Tbsp Shortening

1 Egg

2 Tbsp milk

Mix first 3 ingredients in pan and add peaches and cinnamon.

Cook until thick. Add juice. Pour into casserole.

Sift: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt.

Cut in shortening.

Combine egg with milk.

Stir into dry mixture.

Drop onto hot fruit.

Bake 20 – 25 minutes at 400 degrees.

Makes 2 servings.

The recipe is fairly easy to make and uses items you should already have on hand. When I took the picture below I forgot to include the second half of the ingredients. Oops! 

Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees and find a casserole or heavy dish that will hold the cobbler and be okay for cooking in the oven. 

When those are ready go ahead and add the cornstarch, sugar, and water to a sauce pan over medium heat. 

Stir this occasionally to be sure it is melting together well. Meanwhile go ahead and slice your peaches. If you're using pre-sliced peaches then you won't have much work to do! 

If you're using peaches from a can or bottle that are kept in syrup don't include the syrup in the recipe. When your peaches are nicely sliced you can  check on the cornstarch mixture on the stove. It should start to thicken as it heats. 

When it is ready go ahead and add the peaches and cinnamon to the mixture. 

Constantly stir the peaches into the mixture and as it heats up it will start to thicken. You will want a thick syrup to form before you remove it from the heat. 

When a jelly like sauce has formed go ahead and add the lemon juice and mix well. Then remove the peaches from the stove and place into the casserole. (No need to grease or flower the casserole dish)

You can let the peaches sit while you sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. 

Go ahead and cut in the shortening to the flour mixture. 

Mix well to be sure everything has combined. In a separate bowl combine the egg and milk. 

Mix the egg and milk together before adding it to the flour and shortening mixture. 

Mix everything together well until you have a batter. It will be a thick consistency. 

When the batter mixture is ready go ahead and put it over the top of the peaches. You can either drop it in like the recipe says or you can smooth it over the entire top like I did. 

Once the batter is added to the peaches in your liking you can go ahead and put it in the oven. Mine cooked for exactly 20 minutes so be sure you keep an eye on it. It will be done when the top is a light brown color and the peaches are bubbling in the syrup. 

This is best eaten when it's still warm with either ice cream or whipped cream! 

Overall the recipe is fairly easy to make and quite tasty. There weren't any strange ingredients or difficult techniques used. Therefore I gave the recipe a 4 out of 5 on the yummy scale! 

I took a point off because the batter on top of the peaches was rather flavorless and tasted almost like Bisquick. I would have preferred a granola like topping, but the peaches were very tasty!! What are you waiting for? Get baking! 

Farfalle Leonardo

Farfalle Leonardo 

This recipe was found under the P tab for pasta. 

I'm Italian and love pasta so I couldn't resist the opportunity to try this recipe. Plus I love these little bow tie shapes!  The recipe is fairly simple and puts a bit of a twist on a regular red pasta sauce. My mother never made this one either, but it looks like another cut out from a newspaper. Some of the comments within the recipe are humorous. You can see for yourself below:

Farfalle Leonardo

1 Pound bulk sausage

1 Large onion, chopped (1 cup)

1 Clove garlic, minced

1 Can (1 pound) tomatoes

1 Teaspoon leaf oregano, crumbled

1 Teaspoon leaf basil, crumbled

1 Teaspoon salt

1/8 Teaspoon pepper

1 Package (8 ounces) farfalle

½ Cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Flatten sausage meat into a large patty in a large skillet.

Brown on one side; turn and brown on second side. Remove

sausage from skillet and crumble onto paper towels.

2. Drain off all but 2 tablespoons of fat in skillet. Sauté onion

and garlic in skillet until soft. Drain tomatoes; reserve liquid.

Brown tomatoes in same skillet for 5 minutes. (This is an Italian

cooking trick for a tomato sauce with special flavor.)

3. Return crumbled sausage to skillet with liquid from canned

tomatoes, oregano, basil, salt and pepper. Simmer, stirring

occasionally, 30 minutes.

4. Cook farfalle, following label directions, until done as you

like pasta. Drain and place on large heated serving platter. Spoon

sauce over and top with Parmesan cheese. Toss at the table and

serve at once.

Don't worry about finding bulk sausage. You can either use the ones that are in the casing and take them out or just used the ground sausage meat. I found the ground meat and used a sweet kind. Feel free to use spicy sausage if you'd like. Also, we usually have Romano on hand so I used that instead of the Parmesan. If you aren't afraid of garlic I would also recommend using more than one clove in the recipe. Let's get cooking! 

The first thing I would start with is bring the water to a boil for your pasta. Make sure you use a large enough pan. 

Before we start cooking you will want to chop the onion and garlic so when you need to put it in the pan it is ready. Start by cutting both the bottom and the top of the large onion off and peeling away the skin. 

Then chop it into somewhat small pieces so it will cook easily. 

Next, do the same to the garlic by cutting off the top and bottom of each clove and peeling away the skin. 

Depending on how much you like garlic you can adjust the size of the cuts you make. I like garlic, but I don't like to bite into big chunks of it when I'm eating so I chopped mine fairly small. 

Now that your chopping is done you can go ahead and get a pan for the sausage. Make sure it is large enough to hold the sausage and tomatoes. Then turn it on to medium heat and get your sausage ready. 

If you are using the sausage with a casing be sure to remove the casing before cooking it. You can follow the original directions in which the recipe tells you to form a patty with the sausage for cooking. I just left the whole rectangle together and placed it in the pan. 

While that starts to cook down you can prepare your tomatoes. You will want to separate the juice from the actual tomatoes in the can. You can do this by using a strainer or by picking each tomato out of the juice. 

When the sausage is brown on the bottom go ahead and flip it over. I started to break mine up in the pan so I could assure that it was cooking all the way through before putting it on to the paper towel. 

When the sausage is brown on both sides it is ready to come out of the pan and on to the paper towel. The best way to do this is to place two pieces of paper towel on a plate and spoon the sausage onto it. 

The pan will have some left over oil in it, but that is what you will use to cook the rest of the ingredients. If you have more than 2 tablespoons of oil left in the pan then drain off the excess. I didn't even end up with a tablespoon. 

When your pan is ready go ahead and add your chopped onion and garlic. 

Yum! If you weren't hungry before the smell of cooking garlic has to have your tummy growling! Let these cook until the onion is translucent. Make sure the garlic doesn't burn. 

Once the onions and garlic are cooked to your liking go ahead and add the tomatoes only. (Leave the liquid for later). Cook the tomatoes for about 5 minutes in the pan. I cut mine into smaller pieces in the pan since they were rather large. 

While the tomatoes cook you can go ahead and cut up your sausage into small pieces if you haven't already. 

When your tomatoes have been cooking for about 5 minutes go ahead and add the sausage back to the pan and mix it in well. 

Then add the tomato sauce to the pan and stir that in until well mixed. 

When the tomato sauce is combined well go ahead and add the seasonings of oregano, basil, salt and pepper. 

Mix the seasonings all together into the sauce and let it cook for about 30 minutes. This will help the sauce thicken and let the flavors develop. 

When there is about 10 minutes left until the sausage sauce is done you can start cooking the farfalle. Before putting the pasta in the water make sure you salt the water well. 

When the pasta is in the water be sure to give it a good stir occasionally to ensure the farfalle aren't sticking to each other. 

After about 8 or 9 minutes you can check if the farfalle is done by scooping one up and tasting it. If it's not too hard for your liking you can go ahead and dump the pan into a strainer and then place the farfalle in a dish. 

Make sure your sauce is done at the same time because the farfalle will stick together if you leave it out without sauce too long. Go ahead and pour the sauce over the pasta. 

Mmmm! Mix it all together in the bowl before serving. You can add the cheese to the entire dish or let each person put it on their own. 

Yum!! This recipe was really simple and had great flavor! I gave it a 5 out of 5 on the yummy scale! 

I highly recommend giving this recipe a try! You can mix it up with different kinds of sausages if you like and also different shapes of pasta. Definitely don't pass this one up!