The Cooking Ninja

Pierre has this French regional cook book sitting on his shelf for many years - given by his mother to motivate him to cook something more grand than his famous carbonara I have flipped through this book so many times before but never really dared to try out any of the recipes. Then the other day I was just having another glance at it and I stumbled upon poivron rouges farcis, I looked up the ingredients and it did not seem too complicated to do plus I have everything I needed to cook this dish in my fridge. So why not

This dish is linked to the city of Perpignan from the Roussillon region (a sunny area in the south-east of France, along the Mediterranean sea and the Pyréenés mountains) which of course produce southern/mediterranean cuisine.

And this is my entry for WCC 18's Red and White theme.

Poivron rouges farcis à la Perpignanaise

(taken from Les meilleures Recettes des Régions de France)

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 45 minutes
Makes: 4

Ingredients

• 4 red peppers
• 200 g pork meat - finely chopped (a bit lean and fatty)
• 50 g almond slices
• ½ cup olive oil (approximately)
• ½ cup water
• 1 egg
• 1 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 thick slice of bread
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• parsley (a few stalks)
• pepper & salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4).
2. Stand the red peppers up on a cutting board and slice them in half, lengthwise. Remove the core, white rib on the sides, and the seeds.
3. Immerse them in a pot of boiling salted water for 5 minutes. Drain and let them cool down.
4. Chop the onion, garlic, a few stalks of parsley and bread. Place them and the chopped meat in a bowl and mix them well together.
5. Add in the egg, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp cinnamon and season it with salt and pepper (to your taste) and mix them well till you get a homogeneous stuffing.
6. Stuff each half of a red pepper with a handful of stuffing, carefully leveling the top, and drizzle some olive oil on it. Then scatter some almond slices on top of the stuffing.
7. Drizzle a little olive oil on the baking dish and pour in the water. Then place the stuffed red peppers in the baking dish.
8. Bake it for 45 minutes at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4).
9. Serve it with white wine like some Côte du Roussillon.

The Verdict

Mmm...very aromatic. The stuffing is nice, tender and fragrant with a tint of cinnamon. Surprisingly the cinnamon blends very well with the rest of the ingredients in the stuffing - it isn't overpowering like I thought it would be when I was mixing it. The combination of the meat stuffing and the red pepper give a unique and tasty taste. I'll definitely cook this again.

My preparation of the above stuffing was done with a food processor. First the meat was chopped up a bit before adding the onion, garlic, parsley and bread. Once it is mixed and chopped up, in goes the egg, oil, cinnamon, salt and pepper and mix till it is homogeneous. Saves a lot of time and I only have to clean up my food processor.