Stuffed Peppers

Learning about the technique of stuffing vegetables became an inspiration. I brainstormed different combinations of capsicum stuffing, trying to think of the best: yellow capsicum stuffed with brown rice, togue, cauliflower...tofu, or quail eggs? I thought that red capsicum should have earthier flavors, like liver and red onion, or catfish and champignon mushrooms, with red rice. Green capsicum would have cubes of sayote, patola, and green papaya--herbed and salted.

And then somebody on these culinary discussion forums I go to said, "Poblano peppers stuffed with macaroni and cheese."

Bye-bye, attempted health consciousness. I'm making that instead.

With Lucky Me mac & cheez, and baked mac style, and some bell peppers (according to the person at the marketplace) that are not shaped like bells at all.

Here's my attempt, which was an eventual success, at hollowing out the peppers for stuffing.

Simply slicing off the top was the wrong way to go about it.

Cutting around the stem and into the fruit allowed me to pull out the fillings by the stem. (Peppers are a culinary vegetable and a particular species and/or processing method make it a spice, but in botany, peppers are a fruit.)

On the plate, pictured above: hollowed-out and de-seeded peppers, and some cabbage leaves that were steamed until soft. Beside them, bowls of Lucky Me macaroni, which cooks for four minutes and then you just add the flavor packet goop. So, the baked macaroni is not actually baked, but boiled and then has a flavor packet added to make it taste like it's baked when it wasn't. Sneaky.

In general: stuffing raw peppers was a huge mistake when no sour cream was involved! The texture was totally wrong, so I would toast, roast, or steam the hollow peppers before stuffing them next time. I steamed the peppers after stuffing them this time.

baked mac + pepper = good, could use barbecue sauce though*
baked mac + cabbage = very good, would have again
mac & cheez + pepper = mediocre, maybe should have gone for a spicier pepper to stuff.
mac & cheez + cabbage = boring, but if I'd made a bunch of these I'd just mindlessly chomp at them and not be able to stop until they were all finished off


* I did try out the ketchup-mixed-with-molasses trick again, adding some Worcestershire sauce--Not going to do that again, and I don't really recommend it for this.