A Perfect Vegetable, Indeed

I'm a sucker for the concept of stuffed peppers. I mean, you end up eating an entire pepper! That's a pretty big score in the land of vegetable intake. In reality, though, the fillings are often unimpressive and bland. Perfect Vegetables offers three recipes for stuffed peppers. I made the one which I thought had the most potential to knock my socks off: Stuffed Bell Peppers with Spiced Lamb, Currants, and Feta Cheese (pg 195). Yes, please!

This dish was absolutely perfect, as written. I cut the recipe in half, to only stuff two peppers instead of four, but otherwise, I didn't mess with the measurements. The combo of cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, garlic, fresh ginger, cilantro, and red pepper flakes was just right.

The authors provided several suggestions for how to keep your peppers upright. They were so simple that I felt foolish for not coming up with them on my own. Their ideas included putting the peppers in cupcake tins, individual custard cups, or in a bundt pan. Durrr! How have I spent all this time balancing them in Pyrex dishes? Never again! The custard cups were exactly the right size, and worked--here's that word again--perfectly. 

Matt said that the only problem was that I didn't make any extra, and asked why I wanted him to starve. One of these days, I'll teach him what a serving is supposed to look like.

Conclusion: True love. I'm happy I froze half of the ground lamb, because now I can make this again with little hassle. Plus, it's sort of Charlie-approved. He ate several bites of lamb. He never eats meat. I was shocked. Then he got a big chunk of feta, and it turned him off from eating altogether. Still, I call it a success.

On a side note, Matt said that he's fine with me buying cookbooks as long as I use them. He's going hunting this weekend (when in Texas, do as the Texans do...), so we were joking that if he, by chance, happens to shoot a deer or a boar, we'll need to find a book to tell us how to cook it, because I've never in my life dealt with venison. He said that Dorie should write a book on cooking wild game, and that's when he announced that he's fine with me buying cookbooks if I use them. Use them? All I do is use them! I assure you, that has NEVER been his opinion before, and he knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth, because he started laughing. Regardless, I'm pretty sure he just gave me the thumbs up to go hog-wild, right? MWA HA HAAA!!