Red Peppers Stuffed with Refried Beans and Goats C...

I was at a loss for what to make for dinner tonight. There were 2 large red peppers languishing at the bottom of my crisper so I decided to look for a recipe for stuffing them. Luckily I had some goat cheese on hand but I wasn’t sure what else to add as a filling.

Trawling through recipe sites I found one for Red Peppers, Red Beans and Goat Cheese, which sounds delicious. Of course I was missing the kidney beans and the butternut squash so I needed to make some adjustments.

For my recipe I used a tin of refried beans which I heated up with 2 chopped shallots, 2 cloves of minced garlic and the bits of pepper that were around the stems. I added some mushrooms toward the end.

I had already starting roasting peppers – without the mixture – and after about 20 minutes took them out and crumbled some goat cheese in the bottom. I then added some of the refried bean mixture about ½ way up the pepper and then added some more cheese and another layer of the mixture.

Once the peppers were completely stuffed I covered the top of them with the rest of the goat cheese. I put them back in the oven for a further 30 – 40 minutes or until soft.

They looked and smelled delicious! The only problem was I got my timing wrong and my husband was another 20 minutes getting home from work. The result was that the peppers became very soft and one fell over spilling its contents all over the baking tray.

It didn’t look pretty but boy did it taste great! I will try the original recipe at some point – I love the idea of adding kidney beans and butternut squash!

White Bean and Turkey Chilli....

This is the perfect lunch for a lazy Sunday afternoon. The recipe comes from one of my favourite chefs, Giada De Laurentiis and is a real winter warmer.

Although I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand for her white bean and chicken chilli, I compromised and the results were just as good.

I halved the recipe as I was making this for two, but I still used one whole onion and 4 cloves of garlic.

Instead of chicken I used turkey and substituted savoy cabbage for the swiss chard.

This also gave me an opportunity to use cannellini beans which I have never used before. For my version of the recipe I only used 1 can.

I also made a few changes to the spices as I was missing both fennel seeds and chilli powder. Instead I used;

• 1 heaping Tablespoon of Cumin
• 1 Tablespoon of dried Oregano
• 3 teaspoons of Garam Masala

I added salt and pepper to taste and actually forgot to add the red pepper flakes towards the end of cooking, so it wasn’t as hot and spicy as it could have been.

Everything was in the pot and cooked within 20 minutes – then it just simmered away for another 45 minutes before I served it up with some freshly grated parmesan cheese.

I will definitely make this again!