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.

Corn Rice

My aunt and I used to be really curious about what makes rice really yellow when it's served at Chinese restaurants, or, in my case, Indonesian festivals.

Egg yolks don't do that, at least not without sticking to every grain and changing the shape so that it looks lumpier.

Butter doesn't do that. Margarine doesn't do that without making it taste like margarine, which it didn't.

As it turns out, making a rice pilaf with turmeric spice or, if you can afford it then saffron, is what gives white rice a vivid yellow coloring.

Also, feeding genetically-modified golden rice to Chinese kids without telling their parents. But hey, it worked! Vitamin A for every body!

And now there's corn disguised as rice.

I've seen risoni pasta that's shaped like grains of rice, but corn is new.

Rico corn rice goes for about Php. 70 per kilogram, it does expand (just not as much as rice), and it cooks pretty speedy-quick. The instructions at the back of the pack say to wait for the water to boil first, then pour in the corn rice.

It doesn't taste very much like corn, which is too bad because I really do like the taste of corn even though it makes my stomach acids act up...and, I think corn rice kind of makes my stomach acids act up. Not as badly as actual corn, which gives me water brash, but just that I digest corn rice much faster and get hungry again after a couple of hours.

For that reason, I wouldn't change my staple to this, but it's an interesting ingredient to work with...

Here's me stuffing cabbages with corn rice...

The directions on the pack say that, unlike with real rice, it's better to wait until the water is boiling and then add the corn rice.

So, as the rice cooks below, the cabbage leaves get steamed up top...

I've been having a tactile food craving. I've been wanting to wrap something, like a tortilla or a crepe or something. Cabbage leaves would do, but I wondered how to get them to stay rolled. A tortilla, I could stick with some melted cheese or even cornstarch and water.

But as it turns out, cooked cabbage is very pliable. Once it's rolled into a wrap, it sticks to itself.

I thought the recommended amount of water on the pack, per cup of corn rice, actually left it quite dry. I overestimated the water the next time, and came out with a porridge.

So, I thought that I'd make it into champurrado. Not champorado, but champurrado substituting corn rice for corn meal, adding chocolate and cinnamon sugar.

Maybe I should specify...

- 1 cup corn rice
- 3 cups water
- 2 star anise...things...
- 2 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder
- dash of cinnamon

Although, I don't recommend this recipe that I made up because this was actually pretty intensely flavored. I steeped the star anises in the water, and kept them in there when the water boiled and I added the corn rice. When about halfway done, and the water had turned cloudy with what I supposed was corn starch, I plucked out both anise seeds. The corn rice retained the tangy numbing flavor.

...I still prefer the sticky rice version. While cornstarch is one effective thickener, corn rice doesn't seem to have any left after processing, so it was like ordinary rice dumped in hot chocolate.

I might have put too much anise, since the lift it gave to the dish was a little intense...

Also, the recipe I based this off mentioned star anise as a possible spice, but stuck with cinnamon. Good call, I think, since cinnamon in the chocolate did give it a very woodsy sort of groundedness. Both together...intense, is all I can say. Maybe if I'd doubled the amount of corn rice...because these are flavors that, though new to me in combination, I do think all worked really well together.


But I've thought up of other recipes to use corn rice in, which I'll write more on later.