Here I am, back from the milk-day that I told you about few days ago :-) It was very exciting, and in the next few days I’ll post some pics to give you an idea of what we’ve learned and of the people we’ve met (some very interesting discoveries).
In any case, we should begin this week with a nice recipe given that this past month I mostly posted follow-ups (and dear God, there are many more that I should show you). With great joy, in my last week veggie box I found a kind of bell peppers (I adore them), those small and round, typically found in Naples (given their name papaccelle, this is not hard to guess). They are extremely sweet and meaty, and, as you can see in the pics, they have a thick and crunchy pulp.
I already wrote about these wonderful veggies long time ago, and that recipe is also in the pasto nudo book. There they were cooked, opened, rolled and filled with bread, egg, and cheese. This time around they’ll be easier to make and esthetically even more appealing because I have eggplants and – lucky me – also a bit of Loreto Pacitti’s and Gregorio Rotolo’s spectacular cheeses.
The only difficult part was deciding between caso peruto, Conciato di San Vittore (the Loreto’s ricotta moscia, a particular kind of ricotta, was not one of my choices because I was looking for a cheese that is quite intense), muffato, ricotta a scorza nera a black skin cheese, and Gregorio’s Gregoriano. I’ll leave it to you to find out what I’ve chosen! :-)
I got the inspiration from Maria, who kicks ass when it comes to Neapolitan cuisine, with her blog Comm’è ammaro stu ppane (you noticed that some blogs are much more trustworthy than others,
right?). For the first time I saw peppers filled with eggplants and, trust me, after trying peppers filled with zucchini and eggplants filled with friggitelli, I absolutely couldn’t resist!
I followed the recipe almost completely except for the fact that I browned the bread for a bit with eggplants and that at the end I didn’t add breadcrumbs. They’ve never been my favorite except when using them for frying things. Even though I had no olives and only a few cappers, both Zac and Zacchina liked them a lot. Next time I’d like to pickle them (or, who knows, maybe to make them fermented!!? :-)), but I guess for that purpose they should be smaller.
I have to say that this kind of recipe really connects you with slow and peaceful cooking. It’s best to prepare it on Saturday or Sunday, maybe with some music on in the kitchen or perhaps while chatting with someone about relaxing and joyful topics (no critiques or getting upset while cooking because otherwise you pass it all to food, and it tastes like poison!!). Hearing the crunchy peppers giving in to your knife, removing the seeds inside with the precision of a surgeon (I left all the seeds in a paper bag and next year I’ll try to plant them!), and turning them upside down so that they lose some water… it is precious.
And, in the meantime, you can cut the eggplants in small cubes and put them in some salt so they lose their water. Can’t you see by any chance that I’m reading Cooked? :-) I can’t wait to write a review about it, Pollan’s descriptions are great. After reading his book, anyone would want to start cooking. Ok, enough of chatting, I’m gonna move on to the recipe. Last advice, while you’re cooking, embrace the smell of food!!!
Ingredients:
dozen bell peppers
two eggplants (I used the white ones)
100 grams of wholemeal sourdough bread made with ancient grains flour, it should be day-old
1 garlic clove
extra virgin olive oil
any organic cheese, as much as you like (better if it melts easily)
raw sea salt
pepper grains
cappers with salt (optional)
black olives (optional)
few sprigs of fresh wild thyme
First wash the peppers, dry them and remove their heads, but try not to make them too small, otherwise they won’t be able to stay in one piece. Take a knife and cut off the white parts which connect the seeds to the pulp. Then grab the seeds with your fingers and remove them with one rotatory motion. Lay the peppers upside down so they lose some of their water (and leave them aside).
Soak the bread in some water (I use both the crust and the white part). In the meantime, peel the eggplants and cut them in pieces, roughly 1cm tall. Lay them on a plate in two or three layers putting salt on each. Put another plate on top of them and then put something heavy on the plate. Leave them on the kitchen sink so they can lose some water. I don’t think this process makes eggplants less bitter (I honestly don’t feel any bitterness), but it does remove the excess of water that eggplants often have (particularly the white ones). Otherwise, if you stir-fry them they turn out to be… kind of boiled.
Wait for roughly one hour, remove the water, squeeze the eggplant pieces and cut them into small cubes. Then heat up some olive oil in a pan, add a garlic clove, and stir it until it starts to turn brown. Add the eggplants and stir-fry them until they get a very nice color and they become tasty. At this point squeeze the pieces of bread, add them to the mix, and stir-fry them until they dry out a bit.
Preheat the oven to 180oC, conventional static mode.
Put everything in a large bowl, wait for it to cool off, add cheese cut into cubes, cappers and olives – if you have them –, wild thyme sprigs, a drop of olive oil, some salt and pepper. Decide how much cheese you want to put depending on your taste and on the “strength” of the cheese you’ve chosen.
Put the peppers in the baking pan (I used the same old iron pan that I use for everything) where you previously drizzled some oil, and then add some filling into each pepper. Don’t put too much filling and don’t press it too hard, otherwise you’ll end up with boiled, hard and inedible bread meatball. Add a bit of oil and put the pan in the oven without covering the peppers with their top part. Bake for roughly 40 minutes.
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