This recipe, which came from my fevered imagination whilst I was craving stuffed peppers one day, succeeded in surprising even myself. Oh yes, in a positive way, of course! You wouldn't be seeing it if the reverse was true as I very much keep my failures to myself. Well, apart from sharing the very worst of them on my Facebook page, where it's worth it for the laugh.
Anyway, these 'ere stuffed red pointy peppers are just totally lush. The tasty turkey mince filling (you could use pork mince, if turkey isn't your thing) is flavoured with Italian style influences - tomato and sun dried tomato pesto predominate - yet they have a Mexican touch with the spicy Mexicana cheese that tops each pepper. The gorgeously soft, sweet, fruity flavour of the peppers themselves just brings everything together in a deliciously amalgamated whole.
I recommend serving the peppers either with something creamily rich like a mushroom risotto (which is my choice), or a fresh crunchy mixed salad with a creamy dressing. I think either would work as well as the other.
Super-simple to make, the bit that takes the longest time is the making of the filling. However if you're going to be pushed for time then that can easily be made ahead and even frozen (but defrost before use), thus making the preparation a simple matter of filling the peppers and putting them in the oven. From getting out the ingredients to sitting down to eat took around 90 minutes, but then I'm incredibly slow. However, it gives you an idea of the time required.
Go! Fry! Stuff! Bake! Enjoy! (A glass of wine wouldn't go amiss, either).
TASTY TURKEY STUFFED ROMANO PEPPERS (serves 2)
Ingredients :
2 long red pointed Romano peppers, cut into two lengthways and de-seeded
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 red onion, diced finely
1 garlic clove, diced finely
sea salt & ground black pepper, to taste
300g minced lean turkey
1 vine ripened medium tomato, diced
4 cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 tsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
half a tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 tbsp sun dried tomato pesto
1 tsp reduced salt Knorr chicken stock powder
100ml warm water
1 tbsp torn fresh basil leaves
60g sliced Mexicana cheese, or grated mature cheddar.
Method :
Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.
Before beginning to cook the filling, deal with the two peppers and cut them in half lengthways, remove the pith and seeds but leave the stem attached. Place them into a suitably sized baking dish.
Heat the rapeseed oil in a large frying pan and add the onion & garlic. Fry until the onion is softened and beginning to take on colour. Season with a pinch of sea salt and a couple of pinches of black pepper.
Push the onion & garlic across to one side of the pan and add the turkey mince. Break up the mince and fry until there is no pink colour left. Mix the onions & garlic in and continue to fry.
Add the diced and quartered tomatoes, frying until the pieces have softened and are beginning to dissolve into the mix. Add the tomato puree, tomato ketchup, dried oregano, chopped parsley, pesto, chicken stock powder and water. Stir gently to combine and cook on until everything is mixed well together and the liquid has reduced significantly. You are after a fairly dry mix, so that the mince doesn't just flow out of the peppers! Once you are happy with the consistency, add the torn basil leaves and stir through. Taste for seasoning and adjust both salt & pepper to taste.
Divide the mince mixture between the four pepper halves and either place the Mexicana cheese slices over the mince, or sprinkle the cheddar over the top of each pepper.
Place the baking dish into the middle of the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the cheese is golden and bubbly.
Serve with some wild mushroom risotto, or alternatively a fresh mixed salad.
Printable version
I'm a bit of a novice at the Fully Loaded Nachos game, however I do love them! This evening's version was so good, its recipe definitely requires blogging. Well, I say "recipe" but in truth it's more of an assembly job than a recipe!
Along with the luscious goodies that are included in this turkey version, I also contemplated adding things like beans - red kidney or cannelini - sweet corn, fresh coriander, avocado and sliced red chilis. All the kinds of things that you might find in a Mexican dish. While I can see all of those things working, I'm glad I didn't add everything because it would have been far too much - so hark to my word of caution that Fully Loaded, whilst encouraging heaps of ingredients, can easily become too much to eat! As it is, these nachos came in at around 725 calories per portion which required some jiggery pokery of the other meals, in order to fit it in without exceeding my daily calorie limit!
Anyway, the best thing about this meal is that you can include or exclude whatever you like. So long as there are nacho chips and cheese, whatever else you add is entirely up to you. My recommendation is that you use this recipe as help regarding how you make the dish, but free wheel about what you include.
Oh and it's worth knowing that these are like iron filings to a magnet for teenagers. They just can't resist! :D
FULLY LOADED (TURKEY) NACHOS (serves 2)
Ingredients :
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 small red onion, chopped finely
half a bell pepper (any colour), diced
250g turkey mince
a pinch of sea salt
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
sufficient barbecue sauce to coat
half a tsp of hot smoked paprika
150g or thereabouts, of nacho chips
100g of grated cheddar cheese
100g of grated Mexicana cheese
2 small tomatoes, sliced finely
sliced jalapeno peppers, to taste
100g approx of tomato salsa
150ml of sour cream
2 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
crispy fried onion bits (optional)
fresh lime wedges.
Method :
Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.
Heat the rapeseed oil in a frying pan and add the onion, bell pepper pieces, salt & black pepper. Cook over a moderate heat until the onion is softened and the bell pepper has begun to soften. Move the vegetables to one side, increase the heat to high and add the turkey mince. Fry until the mince has changed colour by 90% and stir in the vegetables. Continue to fry until all the liquid has gone and the mince mixture is beginning to caramelise.
Reduce the heat to moderate and add the barbecue sauce & smoked paprika. Stir everything together and cook until you have a fairly dry mix, which should only take a few moments.
Remove from the heat and set aside.
Take two baking trays and cover each with a sheet of baking paper.
Arrange a handful of nacho chips in the centre of each sheet, in a relatively flat layer. This is the "plate" upon which the dish will be built - so don't take it too broad or you'll use too many chips, or too high or you won't fit the end result in the oven!
Next, sprinkle on a quarter of the cheese onto each bed of chips.
Then, heap on a quarter of the mince mixture onto each bed of cheesy chips.
Arrange the tomato and jalapeno slices across the mince mixture.
Dollop on the salsa, dividing between the two batches of chips.
Take another handful of chips and heap them on top of everything, on both trays.
Add the remaining quarters of the mince mixture, balancing it on top of the piles.
Sprinkle everything liberally with the remaining cheese, again dividing it between the two trays. You can even add more jalapenos at this stage, if you're keen!
Carefully place the two trays into the oven for 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them at half time, as you don't want the chips to burn.
When the cheese is melted and the mince is sizzling, remove the trays from the oven and have some warmed plates waiting.
Taking the baking paper, make it into a chute and slide the nachos onto the warmed plate. They should go in one fell swoop, so be brave!
Add dollops of sour cream, sprinkle with the sliced spring onion and crispy onions, if you're using them and add the two wedges of lime, for squeezing at the table.
Prepare to accept the grateful and adoring thanks of the masses.
Printable version
I don't remember when I spotted the original recipe on BBC Good Food - which you can find here - but it was some time ago. I bookmarked it, thinking it bore further investigation and only recently rediscovered it when I was having a bit of an American/Mexican thing going on with the menu plan.
You will, no doubt, have gathered that I tend to gravitate towards simple recipes. Ones that don't require much "dotting about the kitchen", doing this bit over here and that bit over there - basically, because I just don't have the legs for "dotting about". So I go for recipes that demand a) some preparation of ingredient activity, i.e. chopping, grating, etc. and b) some "putting in a pan in order, stirring and heating" activity. Those sorts of recipes are just great for when my legs aren't behaving too well and trundling around the kitchen dragging my perching stool behind me is too much to contemplate.
Sometimes, however, these recipes that are reputed to be "simple" are rather more "dull" than "easy to make". Once you have a bit of cooking time under your belt - I don't like to think how long I've got racked up now - you can spot these dull recipes before they ever reach the stove. However, occasionally, one will still slip through the net. So, when I was reading this recipe through and seriously contemplating cooking it, I was evaluating whether a) I had got the ingredients already, b) how much the required extra ingredients would cost and c) what the end result would be of combining all these ingredients. Well, a) was good - I'd got almost all of the ingredients already, b) was "eminently affordable" and c) was "could do with a bit of help".
So. What to do, to help the flavours along and boost this from what appeared to be a potentially mediocre flavoured dish, to something that would deliver a good old flavoursome meal.
Well, for starters, it was billed as being a "chilli con carne" with a tortilla top. So, if you're making a chilli con carne, where's the garlic? Got to have garlic! The chipotle chilli paste they used would deliver quite a strongly smoky flavour, whereas I had just chipotle chillis and not paste. So to bolster that smokiness - and a chilli has to have paprika in it - I thought I'd add some sweet smoked paprika. Better to use sweet than hot smoked paprika, I thought, as I didn't want to overdo the peppery heat. However, if you're into chillis that leave you feeling like one of Daenerys Targaryen's dragons, then by all means step up the chilli effect.
A chilli needs some herbage, in my opinion, so as my herb of choice at the time was oregano, that got included on the ingredients list. Now thinking about the tomato side of things, tomato puree and tomato ketchup were a given - both of which aide and abet the whole tomato thing that goes on with chilli con carne. The tomato puree richens the flavour base and tomato ketchup adds that tasty mix of spicy flavours and subtle sweetness. If you have never put either of them into your chilli con carne, I recommend you give it a go one day.
After that, it was just a simple matter of bolstering the chicken/turkey flavour combo by adding some of Essential Cuisine's yummy chicken stock powder. A half a low salt stock cube would do at a pinch, or a teaspoonful of chicken bouillion powder - but be careful that the stock you use doesn't taste too much of the stock vegetables and not enough of chicken. It's the savouriness of the chicken flavour that you're after here.
So having decided to use that lot, the original recipe didn't really bear much resemblance to its new and improved version.
However, do you see how easy it is sometimes, to take what appears to be a jolly good idea of a recipe, but one that might not deliver on flavour - and with a few thoughtful additions and/or changes, upgrade it to something special? I sincerely hope that is what happens to recipes of mine that you find here. I'd love it if you took the recipe and did something different with it - and everyone approved. Let me know if you do, as I'm as open to suggestions as the next person!
The end result of the recipe below, is a richly tomato flavoured, interestingly spiced but not challengingly hot, tasty and satisfying weekday dinner. We loved it. I'd have been very happy to have had any leftovers for lunch the following day, but regrettably, we ate the lot. I really liked the tortilla chip layer on top, with the melted cheese that held it together. The heat from the chilli layer below stopped the cheese from setting up hard and everything went beautifully with everything else.
I served the Turkey Tortilla Bake with a small garden salad and some gorgeous home made guacamole. Any excuse to have guacamole always goes down well with hubby and I. I think any kind of salad would go well with the bake and if you were feeling carbilicious, you could even put some potato wedges with it for an extra fill up.
Remarkable as it may seem, I don't have any Cook's Tips for you with this one! It really is simplicity itself to make, with very few areas where a novice cook might potentially trip up.
TURKEY TORTILLA BAKE (serves 3)
Ingredients :
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
500g turkey mince
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp paprika (unsmoked)
half a chipotle chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp chicken stock powder (or half a stock cube)
100g tinned sweetcorn
220g tinned red kidney beans
lightly salted tortilla chips
150g mature cheddar cheese, grated (or to taste)
jalapeno chilli slices (if you like them!)
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives for garnish.
Method :
1. In a deep flameproof casserole dish, cook the onions and garlic in the oil for 8 mins until soft. Stir in the mince and add a bit more oil, if needed. Turn up the heat and cook for 5-10 mins, stirring occasionally, until the mince is browned and just beginning to turn golden where it contacts with the pan.
2. Stir in the cumin, smoked paprika, chipotle chilli and oregano.
3. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, tomato ketchup, chicken stock powder and half a can of water, and simmer until the ingredients have combined nicely. Mix in the beans and sweetcorn, and bring to a lively simmer - stirring regularly - to reduce the liquid until the sauce is thick, piping hot and the mince is cooked.
4. Heat the grill. Take the pan off the heat and quickly put the tortilla triangles randomly but evenly on top. Scatter over the cheese (and jalapeno slices if you like them) and grill for a few minutes until the tortillas are crisp, taking care that they don’t burn.
Sprinkle with a few chopped chives (which I didn't have, at the time) and serve.
Printable version
Think "open sandwich" - and you'll be in the right area.
Hubby and I were pondering over what we had in the fridge that needed using and what we could do with these various things. Having been blogging for the last three or four years - yes, it's been THAT long - we've got quite good at doing this kind of thing. When hubby first suggested an open sandwich affair with the bacon, I pricked up my ears. I've not done too many open sandwiches - and certainly not dinner varieties.
We'd been discussing meatloaves, as I recently made some Forfar Bridies (similar to a Cornish Pasty, except with no vegetables) that failed miserably - but the filling of them would have stood up against a fair amount of competition, as a meatloaf. However, bacon meatloaf? Bacon and what, though? Not sausagemeat - too potentially salty and greasy. Pork mince was mooted first, but then I remembered some meatballs I'd made with turkey mince and how successful they were. Turkey mince has an inherent sweetness that would go nicely with the smoked bacon and it also has the ability to stick together, without encouragement such as egg.
I decided to do a little bit of research on what other people have put into their turkey meatloaves and decide from there what alternative ingredients to use.
So when hubby suggested we use the meatloaf on an open sandwich type affair, it sounded very interesting indeed. We discussed whether to use a cut loaf like soda bread for the bread part, but decided the open texture of a ciabatta would be better suited to the close texture of a meatloaf - and even better, had a sudden brainwave to use a Leerdammer cheese melted on top which would serve to bring the whole sandwich together. With something tasty under the meatloaf, it sounded like we were onto a winner.
Well, I made it this evening (actually, I started at about 3 o'clock this afternoon) and it was really good. No, really, really good.
The meatloaf ingredients were turkey mince, bacon (half minced finely, half chopped roughly), a small amount of breadcrumbs, a small amount of parmesan cheese, a red onion, a clove of garlic, some fresh parsley, some dried thyme, white pepper and four mushrooms. I didn't use any salt at all, as with the bacon and parmesan cheese, I reckoned (and I was right) that there was already enough salt in the mix.
I used the food processor to finely chop (almost down to a paste), the onion, garlic, parsley, tail end of the smoked bacon rashers, thyme, white pepper and mushrooms. This then got mixed with the breadcrumbs, roughly chopped bacon (for texture), turkey mince and parmesan cheese. Packed into a silver foil lined one pound loaf tin and cooked for an hour in a hot oven, it was smelling wonderful. I then drained the juice from the loaf tin and turned the loaf out into a roasting tin - upside down - and gave it another 20 minutes in the hot oven, just to give the outside edge some colour and dry the loaf out a little.
Hubby had some red onion marmalade on his toasted ciabatta, but son & heir and myself erred on the side of caution and went for a zig zag of tomato ketchup. With the meatloaf slices laid on top and the cheese melted over, it really was so good.
Hence, the next time you're thinking "meatloaf" and decide against it because it's boring. Think again and put it on some ciabatta toast with melted cheese. Awesome.
I served ours with some home made coleslaw and watercress salad. Beautiful.
The very best bit is that we've just under half the meatloaf left, for lunch tomorrow. Yum. The following recipe feeds three people, so remember to grill more ciabatta rolls and provide more Leerdammer cheese if you're making for more, or extra hungry people. The meatloaf itself would happily make eight open sandwiches.
TURKEY & BACON MEATLOAF OPEN CIABATTA SANDWICH
Ingredients :
1 red onion, cut into chunky pieces
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
1 small bunch fresh parsley (to make 2 tbsp)
400g smoked bacon rashers
1 tsp dried thyme
4 chestnut mushrooms, cut into quarters
half a tsp white pepper
2 large handfuls white breadcrumbs
20g finely grated parmesan cheese
500g minced turkey
2 ciabatta rolls, each cut into two equal halves
1 tsp red onion marmalade or tomato ketchup
4 slices of Leerdammer cheese.
Method :
1. Take the bacon and trim away the majority of the fat, which should be discarded. Separate the tail (streaky) end from the eye (lean) part and finely chop the tail end. Cut the eye part into three long slices, then chop into decent size squares so that they will provide some texture to the meatloaf.
2. Into a food processor, place the red onion pieces, chopped garlic, parsley (broken into a manageable size), thyme, the finely chopped tail end of the bacon rashers, mushroom pieces and pepper. Chop until the mixture begins to resemble a paste, but stop just as that happens.
3. Tip the paste into a bowl and add the breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and turkey mince. Scrunch the ingredients together with your hands, until thoroughly mixed.
4. Decant into a one pound loaf tin, previously lined with tin foil to make removing the meatloaf much easier.
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200degC/400degF/Gas 6 for one hour.
6. Once the time is up, gently tip the meatloaf tin and pour off the liquid. Then gently remove the loaf from the tin - using the silver foil to lift it into a roasting tin. Flip the meatloaf onto its head and replace into the oven for a further 20 minutes, to brown the outside and dry the loaf out a little.
7. While the meatloaf is finishing cooking, grill the four halves of ciabatta roll and coat with your choice of either red onion marmalade or tomato ketchup.
8. Once the meatloaf is baked, slice and lay a slice (or more) onto each half of roll.
9. Cover the meatloaf with a slice of Leerdammer cheese, then place under the hot grill for 2-3 minutes, just enough to melt the cheese.
Serve with a watercress salad and coleslaw.
Printable version
I seem to be having a bit of a meatball moment, right now.
I suppose, thinking about it for a moment or two, it is because (it seems) that whatever appears in meatball shape, son & heir will eat without demur. Quite apart from that being good for his health, it is also good for ours - as not having a sulky teenager picking disconsolately at his food, means that we can relax and enjoy our meal.
I note that I've got a meatball recipe coming up in the next week, too - so I'll have to back off on them a wee bit, or we'll all be suffering with meatball exhaustion soon.
This meatball recipe, however, was a bit different in that a) the meatballs contain grated carrot (see health comment, above) and b) they are cooked in the oven.
I was a tiny bit dubious as to the success of this recipe because of those two points and in the knowledge that I'd have to pep up the tomato sauce, to make it flavoursome enough to satisfy the family's taste buds. The original recipe stated to just cover the meatballs with a tin of tomatoes and that was it. I couldn't see how that would equate to a "tomato sauce" - it certainly didn't in my opinion! Now ordinarily, I'd fry off meatballs before making the sauce - then dunk the meatballs back in and the whole thing would be done on the hob.
With this recipe (the original of which can be found here on the BBC Good Food website and is created by Lucy Netherton), the meatballs are rolled, then placed into a baking tray and baked, then the tomatoes are added to the tray with some Parmesan cheese, baked a little more and served. Now I like this kind of dish. Cooking it in the oven in this way is fairly easy on the cook in that you don't need to stand (sit, in my case) over the cooker, watching and stirring. Instead I can spend some time doing the dishes (and reduce the amount that will need doing after the meal) or tidying up the kitchen (which often falls to hubby to do), or just plain go and have a sit down for 20 minutes or so. So I was intrigued to discover how the meatballs would fare, cooked in this way.
