Stuffed Peppers With A Puerto Rican Twist

Tags

CSA, Food, Local, Meat, Puerto Rican, Recipe, Sofrito, Stuffed Peppers, Vegetables, Zucchini

So last week I posted about sofrito, the mother of all sauces in Puerto Rico. Now, let’s use this stuff in a less traditional way!

My CSA share included red bell peppers and zucchini, and so stuffed peppers were in order. But rather than do a typical version, I tried using sofrito to flavor the stuffing, and loved the end result. So here goes:

Ingredients:
– 2 red bell peppers
– 4 oz ground lean beef, turkey, or soy crumbles
– 1 medium roma tomato
– 2 slices cheddar or cheese substitute
– 1 medium zucchini
– 1/2 cup sofrito

Steps:
1. Carefully cut out tops of peppers and remove seeds

2. Blanch peppers in boiling water for 15 minutes, make sure peppers are covered. Also preheat oven to 375F

3. Meanwhile, spray a large pan, brown the meat and chop tomato and zucchini. Add zucchini, tomato and sofrito to the meat and cook at medium heat for 5 minutes

4. Place the boiled peppers in a sprayed, oven-safe dish and spoon stuffing mixture in

5. Top with cheese-slices and pop into the oven for 20 minutes.

6. Enjoy without burning your mouth!

Substituting in soy crumbles and cheese substitute, combined with the fresh vegetables makes this a very low calorie (and even vegan!) dish with an international twist.

What ways have you found to spice up traditional comfort foods or update old recipes to rekindle your enthusiasm?

Sofrito, the Puerto Rican All-Purpose Condiment.

Tags

CSA, Food, Puerto Rican, Recipe, Sauce, Sofrito, Vegetables

My CSA shares included cubanelle peppers several times, and, being German, I really don’t know much concerning peppers other than bell and Hungarian peppers. I was completely clueless what to do with these.

Fortunately a Puerto Rican fellow graduate student in my Department beamed at the mention of cubanelles and launched into an explanation. Turns out cubanelle peppers are pretty much the only peppers used constantly in Puerto Rican cooking, and when I asked what recipe a first timer to the cuisine should make, I was immediately told to go with sofrito.

Sofrito is a sauce that goes on anything, especially starches such as rice and beans, but also on meats. It can be eaten hot or cold, and is both intense in flavor and in aroma. A great post on traditional sofrito can be found here.

So here’s the recipe Alice gave me for sofrito:

Ingredients:
2 cubanelle peppers
10 cloves garlic
2 medium tomatoes
1 red bell pepper
1/2 vidalia onion
1 large bunch cilantro

Steps:
1. Remove the seeds from the peppers and roughly chop
2. Roughly chop the tomatoes
3. Peel and roughly chop the onion
4. Remove the stems from the cilantro

5. Add all ingredients to a food processor (this was the inaugural recipe for the wonderful Warrior Handheld Blender that my wife surprised me with!). You should get about 4 cups of sofrito, which freezes really well when pre-portioned.

6. Use on rice, chicken or pork, or stir fry rice and beans. I used it here to top steamed turnips (also in my CSA haul!).

Your entire kitchen will smell intensely of Puerto Rico, and your taste buds will thank you! 🙂
Do you have other recipes you like to use cubanelle peppers in?