My mother is a great cook. Everyone who has ever eaten her food will say so. And, for some reason unknown to me, she loves stuffed bell peppers. Me, I can't quite choke down that much bell pepper in one sitting. I love the flavor, but I hate having to bite into a piece of bell pepper, cooked or raw. I get the flavor into the few recipes in my repertoire by finely chopping it. And I mean fine.
My mother's recipe, just like the recipe of my husband's mother, and every other stuffed bell pepper recipe I've ever eaten called for plain white rice, ground meat, and a marinara sauce to be stuffed into hollowed bell peppers and baked until the cheese on top is bubbly and browned. And it always seems like such a waste of time, for very little flavor.
I, obviously, could go the rest of my life without eating another stuffed bell pepper. However, my husband, he loves them. So, while flipping through some random magazine aimed at stay-at-home moms, I found a recipe for stuffed bell peppers for a slow cooker. (I'd call mine a crock-pot, but I don't own name brand appliances, so let's go with slow cooker.) They were red, yellow, and orange, so I thought that maybe the sweetness of a red would balance out the blandness of the white rice and and that the slow cooker would melt it into something edible.
After spending a disproportionate part of my budget on these colorful bell peppers, I came home from the Commissary only to realize that I didn't have 6 hours to slow cook them. I guess I could have waited until the next day to make them, but I had gone to the trouble of getting all the ingredients in order to surprise my husband, who was on his second week of extra duty (not discipline related, just extra duty that randomly goes around the division), so I decided to push on and bake them in the oven.
But I couldn't get the idea of mushy, over cooked, under seasoned plain white rice out of my head. The only other option I could think of was pasta, but then, who really wants to go to the trouble of eating spaghetti out of a bell pepper? It's a pretty idea, but I wasn't exactly going for pretty. After starring at my pantry for a while, I spied a pack of Ra men Noodles. Up until recently, I thought Ra men was for the sick, the hungry, and the poor, mainly college students, who'd rather spend their money on beer. I only keep a pack or two in the house as an emergency. But a few weeks ago, I came across an Alton Brown (from the TV show Good Eats) recipe that called for a pack of Ra men in place of rice in a Broccoli and Cheese casserole. And voila' I get my replacement for the rice.
Add broken up Ra men to a mixture spiced ground meat (I used ground pork seasoned with salt, red pepper, and sage) and diced tomatoes that has been simmering on the stove for at least a half an hour, and stuff the peppers. Bake for 20 mintues, add any kind of Italian blend cheese you can find (I prefer mozzarella and provolone) and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until all golden and bubbly.
I did discover that I should cut the bell pepper in half, length wise, to create more surface area. My family likes the bubbly cheese the best, and more surface area equals more cheese. I also found that there is not enough of a difference in sweetness to bother spending your money on red bell peppers. Green peppers work just as well, for a third of what you would spend on a red, yellow, or orange.
I'm amazed at how a 16 cent package of Ra men can transform a dish I have loathed for most of my life.
By the way, I still didn't eat the pepper.
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