Equally good served hot or cold, this is an easy and delicious stuffed green pepper recipe.
This recipe is particularly good for green peppers, because the piquant filling goes especially well with their slightly bitter flavour. You can use this recipe for red, yellow or orange peppers too, or do a mixture of different types for a colourful dish.
Adults enjoy the intensely savoury stuffing, with its flavour-kick from capers and anchovies. Some children like it too, especially if they’ve already met these flavours on pizza toppings. If you chop the ingredients suitably small, they will probably eat it happily, without even realising exactly what's in it. If your kids are less adventuruous, you can use finely chopped sautéed mushrooms and mixed herbs and chopped ham or chicken in the stuffing instead.
This recipe is good served hot to accompany grilled fish or chicken, or as a vegetarian main course with rice and salad. It’s also very nice eaten cold, and makes a lovely Italian-style appetiser. You could make a double batch, and serve half hot, half cold on the following day.
STUFFED GREEN PEPPER RECIPE
Serves 4 Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/gas 3. To make the stuffing, soften 300g (5 cups) crumbled stale bread with a little water. Mix with 3tbsp canned chopped tomatoes or tomato passata (called tomato puree in the US), 50g (1/3 cup) sliced green olives, 1 tbsp capers (rinsed and chopped), 4 chopped fillets of canned anchovy, a generous handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped, 75g (3/4 cup) grated (shredded) cheese such as Pecorino and 3 tbsp olive oil. Carefully cut around the stems of 4 large green peppers to make a hole in the top of each pepper. Remove seeds and fibers, and pile the stuffing into the peppers.
Use an ovenproof dish which is just large enough to hold the upright peppers side by side. Pour 500g (1 ½ cups) chopped tomatoes or tomato passata to the dish . Stand the peppers in the sauce and bake for 45 min-1 hr until the peppers are tender, spooning the sauce over from time to time.