Peppers Stuffed with Pesto Rice

After spending two afternoons cooking, it seemed like a good idea to pull some of the creations together into a main course. With the right preparation, this can be a FastFeast - at least when it comes to throwing it together.

2 red peppers, halved and deseeded
2 yellow peppers, halved and deseeded
2 green peppers, halved and deseeded
whole grain rice
rocket pesto
12 small mushrooms, chopped quite small
2 sweet red chillis, halved, deseeded and sliced
sea salt

1. Season the inside of the peppers with a little salt.

2. Heat a little olive oil in a non-stick pan and sauté the chillis for a minute or two, then push to the side and add the mushrooms. Fry the mushrooms at a high heat till they're brown taking care the chillis don't get burned. Mix both chillis and mushrooms and season with a touch of salt.

3. Meanwhile, mix the rice with some rocket pesto.

4. When the mushrooms are done, take of the heat, add the rice and mix well.

5. Spoon the mixture into the pepper halves, cover with tin foil and bake at gas mark 6-7/200°C for 45-60 minutes (our gas oven is kind of slow).

Serve as a vegetarian main course or as a side to fish/meat with a salad. I had a bit of that raw beetroot salad left from yesterday which made a colourful addition to the peppers.

Sterilising Jars

There are all sorts of ways to sterilise jars. The easiest one, I find, is to wash them in very hot soapy water, rinse the soap off, dry them and put them into the oven at a low setting, e. g. gas mark 2/100°C for 10 minutes.

My dishwasher has a sterilising programme. If I'm making larger quantities I run my jars through this programme.

Leave to cool if you're filling them with something cold such as pesto or marinated olives. Hot contents such as jams can be poured in straight away.

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

I never normally eat grapefruit. I mean who would voluntarily eat such a bitter fruit for breakfast?! But don't judge this citrus fruit too soon. Prepared in the right manner, it's actually not as bitter nor as acidic as you would think. The secret is to take the skin and the pith (that's the white stuff) off the segments, because that's what makes the fruit bitter. It's a bit time consuming but when you taste this salad, you'll know it's well worth the effort. As you can see from this photo, I inadvertently bought a pink grapefruit today.

I came up with this recipe ca. 1991 and was rather proud of it. Imagine my surprise when months later I walked past an Edinburgh vegetarian restaurant and browsing the menu for that week/month saw an avocado and grapefruit salad listed among the starters...


The following recipe serves 4.

2 ripe avocados
2 small or 1 large grapefruit
lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
1tsp dried mixed herbs
1-2tbsp sherry vinegar
1tsp mustard
1tbsp extra virgin or cold pressed sunflower oil

a few lettuce leaves, if available

1. Prepare the vinaigrette first by mixing pepper, salt, herbs, mustard with vinegar adding the oil last.

2, Peel grapefruit and divide into segments. Carefully remove the skin and pith from the segments and tear into bite-sized chunks.

3. Scatter lettuce leaves, if used, onto plates. Cut the avocados in halves, remove the stone and sprinkle with a little lemon juice. Arrange the grapefruit chunks and using a tea spoon remove the avocado from its skin in chunks adding it to the grapefruit.

4. Drizzle with the vinaigrette and serve immediately.

Rocket Pesto

There is some truly wild rocket growing in our garden. I planted it from seed using a packet of 'wild rocket' for the first time about 4 years ago and got a really good crop the first year. After it flowered, it self-seeded in a well-behaved manner in the first year, i. e. it just sprung up again in the same area. From then on, there was no containing it, which is partly my fault as I couldn't bear tearing it out from between the flagstones of the seating area. The last couple of years that wasn't so much of a problem as I harvested it continually and some of it got trampled by us and friends we had over for BBQs. But this year it's rained so much, we've hardly used the garden so it's been left to grow where it wants. I keep harvesting it but, to be honest, it's gone rampant. This afternoon, however, I felt a cull was really unavoidable. I gave my heart a push and started pulling the rocket plants out, roots and all. After cleaning it, I had 135 grams - some of which you'll see in the Grapefruit & Avocado Salad we had as a starter tonight. But approx. 100 grams went into a rocket pesto. This recipe is based on/inspired by the rocket pesto recipe from Sophie Grigson's 'Sunshine Food', one of my all time favourite cookbooks.

Alright, my blurb says that there'd be dishes I invented and here, for the second time in as many days I'm posting a recipe from a cookbook. Why? Because creating some recipes from scratch would be like reinventing the wheel. So why not take advantage of what's already out there and tweak if necessary? That's what I've done here. And, pardon the pun, I think this rocket pesto simply rocks ;)


100g wild rocket, roughly torn
60g toasted almonds, roughly chopped (I didn't blanch them but just left the skin on)
60g parmesan or pecorino, broken into chunks
2-3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
freshly ground black pepper
125-150ml extra virgin olive oil

Whiz all the ingredients in a food processor until you get a smooth pesto. Use what you need and transfer the remainder into a sterilised jar and top with olive oil to seal.

I only own an upright blender, which I use for my breakfast smoothies, and a hand-held blender and they're both really hard work, if not useless, as there is not much liquid to work with here. So I'm finally going to invest in food processor!



Variations:
1. Use hazelnuts - as per Sophie Grigson's recipe.
2. A few weeks ago, I used toasted pine nuts but I have to admit that I prefer the pesto with almonds.
3. Use basil and toasted pine nuts to make a classic pesto.

Tips & Tricks: Rice for the week to come

Yesterday, I cooked a huge amount of rice, about 2 mugs of uncooked whole grain rice, so I can speed up cooking during the week. The trick is to cook the rice without salt. After it's cooled completely, it keeps in the fridge for a week. Neat, or what?

Incidentally, I use 1 part whole grain rice to 3.5 parts of COLD water. Turns out beautiful every time (though I'm useless at cooking basmati rice).

Raw Beetroot Salad

While I would normally publish only recipes I've invented myself, I'd like to share this find from Jamie Oliver's book 'jamie's dinners'. I'd never have thought of making a salad out of raw beetroot myself - and this is such a quick recipe. And it's amazing how this is a real salad despite the lack of oil or vinegar!

fresh beetroot
sea salt
freshly grated horseradish or hot horseradish out of a jar
freshly chopped flat leaf parsley

Wash the beetroot and peel using a speed peeler - I think that's the swivel style peeler - I used a knife, though, because I nearly chopped of my fingers trying to hold the slightly slippery beetroot.

Then, using the speed peeler cut the beetroot into very thin slices. Season with salt, add the horseradish and parsley and leave to marinate to soften the beetroot.

The picture above shows what the salad looked like after about an hour. I used up all the parsley yesterday and only had a jar of hot horseradish, which if you look closely has now taken on the colour of the beetroot.

Warm Salad of Beetroot Leaves and Caramelised Onions

I've made this recipe in the past with baby spinach but this week's organic box contained half a dozen small beetroots with all their leaves on. Amazing. And according to Jamie Oliver, my favourite chef, they are nicer than spinach or chard. :)

1 bunch of beetroot leaves, washed and roughly chopped, with some water still clinging to the leaves
stalks, chopped into 5mm long pieces
glug of red wine (white for spinach), if more liquid is required
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt

1 large red or ordinary onion, halved and sliced
1 whole Chinese garlic bulb, cut into slivers
extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt

balsamic vinegar

1. Sauté the onion slices and garlic until they're nicely caramelised. Season to taste.



2. In another pan, heat some more olive oil and sauté the chopped stalks over a medium heat for about 5-10 minutes until almost tender. Add the the beetroot leaves and wilt using just the water that's clinging to the leaves. Season with pepper and salt to taste. Check if they're tender. If not add a dash of red wine (white if using spinach) and cover. You may want to squeeze out any excess liquid but since I've added wine this time that would be a bit of a waste.

3. Place the beetroot leaves and onions in a bowl and mix using a fork. Add a little balsamic vinegar and serve warm or at room temperature.

Variation:
Same as above but add some fennel seeds when the onions are almost caramalised. Add some veggie stock instead of wine. After removing from frying pan drizzle with fresh lemon juice.

Warm spinach salad with caramalised red onion, shallot and garlic.
I think some toasted pine nuts would be lovely with this.