Peppers with zucchini filling

29Jan08

One of the books I have cooked out of most extensively is Marcella Hazan‘s Marcella’s Kitchen. I bought it somewhere in the 90s and read it cover to cover. I came to understand so many techniques and basics of Italian cooking, while cooking a huge amount of recipes from the book.

Marcella is an old lady now, well in her 80s, living in Florida with her husband Victor, after a lifetime of Italian cooking classes for an American audience. I have four of her books and can highly recommend them all, especially her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. But any book will do. She very often sounds very strict, but she explains all steps beautifully and her recipes are always spot on.

This red pepper stuffed with zucchini is one of the recipes I made many times, but it kind of slipped away over the years. I rediscovered it recently and am happy I did, because I really, really like it. For this recipe (peperoni al forno ripieni di zucchine), you will need: 3 large red bell peppers; 2 to 3 small light green zucchini; 1 clove of garlic; 100 grams of Emmenthal cheese; thyme, salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs.

Peel the red peppers with a vegetable peeler and cut each one into 3, along their natural shapes. Put in an oven dish which will hold all red pepper ‘boats’. Slice the zucchini into the thinnest possible rounds, put in a bowl. Add 8 tablespoons of olive oil, breadcrumbs, grated Emmenthal cheese and chopped garlic. Mix to combine, add pepper and salt. When soaked thoroughly, stuff the pepper boats with the mixture. Sprinkle on some extra bread crumbs and drizzle with olive oil. Bake in a 175C preheated oven for around 30 minutes.

You can eat it hot or lukewarm (if you can be so patient to wait!). Peeling the pepper makes it really sweet, and the garlic and thyme give the zucchini a real nice flavour. Makes a lovely side dish for pasta dishes, nice with salads. Love it.

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Filed under: vegetables, vegetarian   |  1 Comment