Hello Gluten-Free Bellos and Bellas (no pun intended),
I’m on a recipe roll here! I’ve been loving cooking at home here in Switzerland. Why? Well, because restaurant food is expensive (this ain’t no Malaysia) but also because raw ingredients are just so amazing here that I can’t help but desire to creatively make them myself!
So today’s recipe is an easy way to use up things that are about to go bad in your fridge while getting your daily vegetable intake in. It’s a vegan and gluten-free version of the Famous Stuffed Bell Pepper!
The trick to this recipe is… well, there’s no trick. It’s so easy, you can’t screw it up. Roasted bell peppers have been delicious to human beings for centuries. That burnt skin…. oooohhh! So let’s just get to it, shall we?
Ingredients
- Two large bell peppers
- 1 small white or yellow onion, sliced thinly
- Left-over rice or quinoa or buckwheat or whatever grain you have lying around
- Left-over veggies: mushrooms and kale/spinach work well. Cut in small pieces, e.g. dice.
- A drizzle of olive oil
- A pinch each of rosemary and thyme
- A dash of basil and marjoram if you have it (or oregano works as well)
- Vegan cheese if you have it (optional)
- Salt and pepper to taste
Method
1. Heat up a teaspoon of olive oil in a medium pan. Saute onion slides. Add salt and pepper to make the onion “sweat.” Quickly add the other seasonings: rosemary, thyme, marjoram, basil, oregano.
2. Add the veggies and lentils or beans to the pan. Stir-fry for a couple of minutes before adding the rice or quinoa. If the mixture is too dry, add a little water. You don’t want this mixture to be too oily.
3. While the mixture is cooking down, cut the bottom of the bell peppers to be flat – to ensure that they are stable. Next, cut off the top of the bell pepper, and clean out the seeds. Rub down with olive oil – inside and outside. Just a dash will go a long way!
4. Heat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Place the two bell peppers in a tightly-packed position – ideally in a small backing dish. Stuff the peppers with your mixture. If you have some vegan cheese you would like to use, sprinkle it on top. It will lock in your mixture and act as a “glue” for the top of your pepper. But this is entirely optional! It works well even without the vegan cheese.
5. Bake for about 20 minutes – until the top of the peppers start to brown.
Take out and serve! So good, and you’ve rescued some of your own food from an Undelicious Demise!
Peace,
Daisy