Stuffed Green Peppers

This is a recipe Daniele and I will make sometimes when we feel we have a lot of vegetables sitting around the house that we need to use up before they go bad. There are few hard and fast rules in this household, but one of them is NEVER, and I repeat, NEVER waste any food. (And another would be always recycle, when possible!).

So, this is a good recipe to use with what you have laying around. Sometimes, we substitute the green peppers for zucchini. As a disclaimer, you may have noticed that D and I have been cooking a lot of "use what you have around the house" recipes lately. It's because we've been busy: D has been teaching a summer course for some students at the University, I've been in the midst of a full time job search, and we've both been doing some traveling. Actually, D is in Japan for the week at a math conference, but luckily I have some backlog of recipes to post. Also, next week I will be visiting my grandma so I might have a recipe of two of hers to share and I am scheming to cook some chicken cheese enchiladas for the night Daniele returns from Nagoya!

So, back to the stuffed peppers.
2 green peppers
mushrooms
1 tomato
1 onion
1/4 leek
1/4 lb ground beef
olive oil
parsley
salt
pepper
bread crumbs
cheese

For this recipe we halved two green peppers and steamed them for about 5 minutes to make them a bit soft. In the meantime, we sliced tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and leeks. We also used 1/4 of a pound of ground beef.

Begin by cooking the onions and leeks with some olive oil. After 5-10 minutes, add the ground beef. When cooked, add tomatoes and onions and also a bit of cooking wine. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.  Finally, add bread crumbs to absorb the moisture of the mixture.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the four green pepper halves in a dish and fill with the cooked topping. Slice cheese and top the green pepper with some cheese. Cook in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until cheese is melted and golden. Enjoy!