Stuffed Peppers--On the Wild Side

Recently, while going through my recipes, thinking what I should cook next and share on my blog, I discovered that the most popular vegetables in my own notebook are not tomatoes--as I expected--but peppers.

Peppers are extremely fragrant and can enrich or be turned into practically any dish. Tropical cuisines tend to use the spicy varieties of pepper, the cold-climate ones, including from the Central Europe, rather have sweet peppers on their menus. I have written down multiple dishes in all categories based on pepper--pastas, tarts, entrées, soups, and salads. I even have several recipes on how to preserve peppers.

All my childhood I was eating peppers either raw, for instance in sandwiches, or stuffed and baked with meats. I also ate a lot of them in a Hungarian lecsó dish---which became very popular in Poland when meat was in short supply--similar to ratatouille, which is made with peppers cooked with tomatoes and squash as main ingredients.

Later, when I started to travel, I became familiar with roasted peppers and ate them in soups, quiches, and various side dishes. As I have plenty to share on the subject of this versatile vegetable, I will certainly return to it in the near future.

But today I have made something rather well known--stuffed roasted peppers. The only innovation in that recipe was the choice of rice. For the first time I made them with wild rice to change the texture of the stuffing and add some nutritious value to it. I think that this experiment produced encouraging results, although the stuffing became much more firm than when made with white rice as prescribed in traditional recipes.

For that reason it is important to use ground meat that is not too lean, as lean meat would additionally harden the stuffing. I would say that, for this particular recipe, beef of chicken can be too lean. All in all, I think that this recipe is worth trying--peppers stuffed with wild rice have beautiful presentation, great taste, and much more value as wild rice is more reach in minerals and vitamins than white rice.

Peppers Stuffed with Wild Rice

Ingredients:
6 red, yellow, or orange bell peppers,
1 medium onion,
1 pound ground pork or lamb,
1 cup wild rice,
1/2 cup Italian cheese mix,
2 tbsp oil,
3 tbsp butter,
1 tbsp of any herb mix (can be any grill seasoning),
salt (about 1 tsp) and pepper.

Preparation:
1. Cook wild rice in salted water according to the instruction on the box and cool it down.
2. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Peel onion, cut into small cubes and fry in oil, just so it is not raw.
3. Put the meat in a bowl, add rice, onion, spices and working with a hand make a smooth stuffing.
4. At the end add cheese and gently incorporate it into the meat stuffing.
5. Cut off pepper tops and remove the seeds.
6. Fill up the peppers with the stuffing and put the pepper tops back on.

7. In a heat-proof dish put a little bit of water and butter, and place all the peppers.
8. Cover with the aluminum foil and bake for about 45-60 min. You can remove the foil after about 40 minutes and let the pepper tops become gold.

Serve with green salad as accompaniment and, if you wish, a baguette.

Pomegranate Cheesecake Dessert--A Delicious Mood Enhancer

Rain is pouring down and clouds have turned a bright morning into an evening. No complaints though, as the drought has been lasting for too long already. On a day like that, how about a mood enhancer and a ray of sunshine for the palate? And what would that be? There is only one answer for me: a sweet, satisfying, and unfortunately also a high-calorie dessert.

When I took two beautiful red pomegranates out of my shopping bag, all I thought about was this cheesecake I once made for one of the DC restaurants. When I had to produce 30 cakes for one evening, this one was easy to make, tasty, and original. It also preserves well and can be refrigerated for up to one week. And because of the pomegranates it is also very in-season now. Pomegranates are best early in the fall and can last until early winter. I came up with this recipe looking at the leftover ingredients, after having baked already 20 cakes but still needed another dozen.

I have never succeeded in making a good cheesecake in America with Philadelphia cheese as a main ingredient. I used to make the most delicious and fluffy cheesecakes in Poland, but back home we use quark, or farmer's cheese, which we whip with butter, eggs, and sugar. Somehow my American cheesecakes were not as good as those from Cheesecake Factory, and disappointed with the results I gave up on making them. There are not many dishes that you can buy at a store and taste better than home made, but I resigned myself to this one being an exception.

But since making desserts is my biggest culinary romance and cheesecakes have always played an important part in it, I had to come up with something that would be irresistibly delicious and at least in the cheesecake family--a cheesecake dessert, which does not need to be baked, is very delicate in texture and taste, and is more of a dessert than a regular cheesecake.

Finishing this dessert with pomegranates gives it crunchiness and also a dose of antioxidants that this fruit is particularly reach in, and therefore became such a craze in recent years.

Those who come from or traveled to Afghanistan say, that there is no place on earth where pomegranates taste better than there, but also here the most dark and ripe can be very sweet, juicy and worth trying, if you do not mind their kind of seedy texture.

I make my cheesecake dessert in a 10" baking form with a removable wall.

Pomegranate cheesecake dessert

Ingredients

Crust:
6 oz (200 g), or about 15-16 pieces of Graham crackers,crushed into small crumbs,as you do for regular cheesecake,
1 stick butter (100-112 g)

Filling/Topping:
3 packs of Philadelphia or other cream cheese (room temperature),
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk,
1 tbsp vanilla extract,
1 pomegranate,
1 pack of Dr. Oetker red cake glaze or you can make your own,
1 cup pomegranate juice,
1/2 tbsp sugar,
1 tbsp corn starch.

Preparation

Crust:
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Melt butter, mix with graham crackers, and spread this crust over the bottom of the pan and around 1" on the side.
3. Bake 15-20 min until dark gold and let it cool down completely.

Filling/Topping:
1. Using a stand-up or hand mixer whip all the cheese together.
2. Add condensed milk with vanilla essence and mix with cheese until it turns into a smooth filling.
3. Working with your fingers, scoop the pomegranate seeds out of the fruits.
4. Put the filling on the crust and cover it with pomegranate seeds.
5. Make a ready glaze according to instruction or mix together sugar, starch and juice in a pot to make your own. Bring it to boiling stirring continuously. Let it bubble for two minutes until the mixture becomes transparent. Cover pomegranate seeds with the glaze and put the dessert immediately in the refrigerator.

If you are very impatient you can try this dessert a couple of hours later, as I did. It will resemble more a dessert than cake and the filling will be still soft and creamy, running from the crust. With the first bite of it in my mouth, the sun came up again.

If you chill it over night, the filling will set up, the dessert will be easier to cut, and will resemble more of a cheesecake than a dessert. Whatever you prefer, both ways I think this is a really wonderful mood enhancer. In different seasons, this recipe would work as well with blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries, but in my opinion, pomegranates make it really special.

Creamed Celery Root Soup--For the Snobbish Taste

Of all seasons, some people love just summer but, maybe because I was born in Europe, I am a four season person. I love sunny summers, but I also enjoy colder fall days and snowy winters. I love to put a sleeveless dresses on a tan body but, on cold days, I like to find comfort in soft cashmeres. For the same reason I enjoy seasonal food, when it tastes best and matches the weather.

The moment bright sun disappeared from the DC sky and the temperature went below 70 F, I finally had an excuse to make a true fall dish. I went to my local food store and got a big bulb of celery root (also called celeriac). Celery root is not very popular in America, although now it is now increasingly available in some hip stores. It is pricey comparing to celery sticks, which cost one dollar a bunch. Priced per pound, a nice bulb can cost over four dollars, which can buy you a good piece of meat.

For many years that was the only type of celery available in Poland. It is also popular in many other European countries, France including, where it has a long-established culinary tradition. The French appreciate its original taste and make many interesting dishes based on celery root, from salads to main dishes. In Poland we use celery root as a soup ingredient, and--either raw or cooked--also in many salads, most notably, in the popular cooked-vegetable salad with mayonnaise, which in Poland is called Italian salad, but in many other countries, possibly including Italy, it is called Russian salad.

I have at least three interesting celery root recipes, which I will try to share with you on this blog, because in my view this nice vegetable is not yet fully appreciated. Despite its characteristically strong flavor and taste, which you either love or hate, the celery root is not as nutritious as some other vegetables, but it is high in fiber, contains potassium and magnesium, and is a good source of vitamins C and B6. It is also alleged to be particularly good for men's health, but you may wish to confirm that on other (more adult) blogs.

I have recently read an article reporting that, in California, many reputable and snobbish restaurants started to put celery root dishes on their menus. I decided to make a celery soup today, as it is one of very few dishes that my entire family would eat. It is a simple soup with a slightly sweet but not overwhelming taste of celery.

Creamed Celery Root Soup

Ingredients:
1 pound celery root,
2 large potatoes,
1 medium onion,
4 cups vegetable stock,
2-3 cups of water,
1 tbsp butter,
3 tbsp oil,
1/4 cup sour cream,
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg,
2 tbsp of any hard blue cheese,
salt and pepper.

Preparation:
1. Peel the onion, celery and potatoes, and cut them into small cubes.
2. Heat oil in a saucepan, add onion and fry until transparent.
3. Add celery and potatoes to onion and fry together until potatoes become transparent too--slightly soft, but not entirely cooked.
4. Salt the vegetables and add enough water just to cover them.
5. Simmer until all the ingredients become soft.
6. Now add vegetable stock, nutmeg, pepper and boil the soup for 3 minutes.
7. Add cream and butter to the soup.
8. Using food processor or blender make a light purée (creamed soup) from the soup.

Divide among bowls, decorate with blue cheese, and serve with white French or Italian bread.