Stuffed Peppers

Good morning!

I have been saving Stuffed Peppers as a topic to be used when I couldn't think of anything else to write about. I was going to write about them last week as a second part of something else, but there was no time nor space for it.

But, Stuffed Peppers are good and worthy of a posting of their own. Now I say unto you that they are a good topic for the likes of me.

For you see, there are American Stuffed Peppers and Mexican Stuffed Peppers. They are quite delicious and quite different. Let's do the American peppers first.

I remember when my mother would make stuffed peppers and I did not like them. The bitterness of the peppers is what one would call an acquired taste and most kids don't have it.  I love them now.  Take as many peppers as you have people, cut out the stems, seeds and soft inside parts, and plunge into boiling water for about 5 minutes. That's called parboiling.

In my childhood the peppers my mother bought and used had much thinner walls of flesh than do the peppers of nowadays.  So they would need much shorter parboiling.  I had a couple the other night whose walls were easily a quarter inch thick. Use your judgment.

"Don't you make those with rice?" a friend asked. Well, no, not necessarily. You can use almost anything as long as it's well seasoned. I like a nice ground beef hash with onions and potatoes.  Ground beef, onions and rice is good too.  It is a good leftover user if you have some cooked rice around. Mexican rice will do.  Fry up your hash, and when you have it done, take your drained peppers and stuff them with your beef mixture.  Or vegetable mixture.  Place stuffed peppers in a greased Pyrex dish or even throwaway dollar store pie pan. They won't care. Oh, and I forgot to say that the exposed surface of the hash should be covered with some kind of buttered crumbs.  Around the peppers pour a nice tomato sauce. And a little over the top.  Fannie Farmer says to pour water around, but surely we can do better than that.  After the peppers have baked for forty minutes, take them out and serve. Yummo. The children will take the stuffing out and leave the shells, but just leave them alone; they'll get over it.

Mexican Stuffed Peppers are another matter.  I am baffled by chiles.  I haven't found any reliable indicator on the outside of a chile to indicate how "hot" it will be. This past year I planted a serrano (hot!) which produced and is still producing a bumper crop of duds.  No heat nor flavor whatsoever. How can this be? Perhaps it needed a different kind of fertilizer or something. I should research this.

Anyway, I once stuffed a bunch of Anaheim chiles and found  that some of them took the top of your head off and the rest were as placid as lambs. But lets assume that they are all good and all the same. You first have to perform that grim duty that most real chiles demand of us--take off the transparent hard skin on the outside. You can put them into the oven in paper bags, lay them on the gas burner, whatever. It's a chore to me. You can always parboil a la American peppers, and then remove the skin.  Some people use canned already peeled green chiles and just pretend they've done the work.

Once your chiles are pristine, take a piece of Monterey Jack, or some Mexican cheese, and stuff each pepper.  You need a piece of cheese about the size of two dominoes, no more, per chile. Lay chiles aside on a towel and make a nice batter. See below:

Batter for Chiles:
4 eggs, separated
3 T. flour
1/2 c. milk
BEAT the egg whites with a pinch of salt till stiff.
BEAT the yolks with flour and milk.
FOLD whites into yolks.

 Heat some fat in a large skillet. Dip the chiles into the delicate batter and fry until brown. You can lay them aside to go into the oven or serve right away with a tomato sauce.
You can even make a casserole of this by putting the stuffed chiles into a buttered dish, pouring over the batter, and  baking. Tomato sauce on the side.

You can also put in any kind of meat, hash, or leftovers into the Mexican chiles too.  My dad always wanted meat in his as he loved meat.  I love cheese in certain dishes, such as enchiladas and stuffed peppers, so I need no meat.  Just don't swamp them with melted cheese on a plate.

I heard a couple of days ago from a young relative of mine who loved the blog and made me recall a lot about the year  that we lived in exotic Laredo before going back to the Lower Rio Grande Valley for good.  Her memories are my memories, basically, though we are separated in years and distance. Reminds me of our unique situation in American life, our incomparable environment of wild beautiful brushland with its animals, bugs, birds, huge cerulean sky, sailing enormous clouds--and rainstorms. How beautiful they were.

It's raining here this morning. What a blessing.  Here, a rain means that the thirsty yard gets a real good little drink, the driveway gets covered with moisture, the newpaper gets soaked, and the roof leaks its dripping waterfall all around the edges, prompting the usual argument between Taterton and me over WHY DONT WE GET GUTTERS AND DOWNSPOUTS?  He holds that we don't need them, I say we do.. You notice that I am the one who goes out in the dawn under a sheet of driblets from the roof, to get that soaked paper.  YAZZYBEL