As much as I loved Christmas, I’m glad to be back in my kitchen tinkering with recipes. Risotto stuffed peppers proved to be a triumph, combining the warm comforting feeling of having risotto in your stomach while feeling all virtuous about the vegetables you’ve consumed in this. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I like occasionally removing skins from sausages and using it like mince in dishes and the herbs in the Italian style sausages add a wonderful depth of flavour. The other benefit in this recipe is that if you use gluten free sausages this would be perfect for those who suffer with coeliac disease (and other gluten free diets).

Anyway, the risotto on this is so delicious D and I were both scraping it out once the peppers were in the oven.

Anyway to make these you will need.

4-5 peppers (depending on how packed with rice you want the peppers to be)

1 pack of Italian style sausages or similar (6 sausages)

1 small onion (sliced)

200g risotto rice

1 clove of garlic (crushed)

Chicken stock

Splash of passata

100g frozen spinach

1 sprig of rosemary

Salt and pepper

Percorino cheese

Cooking spray (I used flora cooking spray)

 

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Half your peppers and scoop out the sleeves and arrange them onto a roasting tray. Keep the stalks on the pepper halves in order to keep more of the filling in.

Fry the onion and garlic over a gentle heat until soft. To skin the sausages use the flat of a knife to squish out the meat so it is more like mince. Add this to the onion and garlic and fry until the meat is no longer pink. Add the rice and then about 300ml chicken stock, the spinach, rosemary and passata. Season with a little salt and pepper.

Cook over a gentle heat, topping the rice mixture up with water when it dries out too much. Remove from the heat once the rice is cooked. The risotto should have slightly more liquid in it that most risotto as it will dry out a little when it is in the oven. Reseason with salt and pepper to taste.

Divide this mixture between the peppers. Top the rice mixture with a little grated pecorino and bake the peppers for 15-20 minutes.

 

I suppose you could serve these with salad or as part of a bigger spread of food; but honestly we had these on their own and they were a delicious week night meal. Perfect if you have a little more time. I think D liked them as a post gym meal too.