Roasted red bell pepper with sweet sausage and shroom stuffing

Ok here is my first post.....I will have pictures to add soon , maybe by tonight but at least you have the recipe. If you follow along for a while you may pick up on a few tipps about how i like to cook but ill give you a heads up,

1. my vegetable combos usualy are created by whatever i have left in my refridgerator, but i
almost always have red peppers, onions, garlic and mushrooms on hand.
2. i use more garlic than i think anyone in the world
3. brown rice is one of your best friends if you are gluten free.
enough about me, here is my recipe, hope you enjoy it.

Ingredients List:

~Red bell Pepper(s)
~ sweet Italian sausage ( be sure to check the ingredients list as sneaky gluten or dairy ingredients tend to find their way into ground meet, I go with trader joe’s brand because they list even the threat of allergens and cross contamination)
~one small onion
~ garlic
~brown rice
~extra virgin Olive oil
~Marjoram
~black pepper
The amount of each ingredients really depends on your taste and how many people you are feeding, so use you r best judgment.

What I did:

I try to remember to start my brown rice before anything else because it always takes the longest to finish. (see note about my favorite way to cook rice. )

The next step was to start to roast the red bell pepper. I had one really long bell pepper so I just cut it in half then de-seeded it so it made two little pepper cups , perfect for stuffing. I rubbed both the outside and inside with a little olive oil and placed in the oven at 350. Ideally I would have covered the peppers with tin foil, but I was out of tin foil so instead I just kept a close eye on them, turning every once in a while so that one side didn’t soften faster than the other.
Finally, once the prep work was done, I started on the stuffing. The sweet sausage wasn’t really greasy so I needed to add a little olive oil to the pan, once it was browned I added the veggies and seasoning. I cut the veggies in large chunks (except for the garlic which was minced to get the most bang out of it,) mushrooms tend to absorb all of the flavors in the pan so larger chunks give you a burst of all of the ingredients at once.
Just about the time my veggies were nice and soft the rice had finished cooking, I added the rice to my mixture and sautéed together for just about five minutes, enough time to marry the flavors.

I pulled the peppers out of the oven and carefully filled them with the stuffing. Topping the stuffed peppers with a little bit more of the black pepper and marjoram I Placed them back in the oven to crisp the overflowing stuffing (only about 5 to 10 more minutes. )

Serve with a side salad of mixed greens, tossed with a little bit of walnuts, dried cranberries, oil and vinegar.

For salad dressing I tend to keep it simple. When you get into the fancy flavored salad dressings you are more likely to find an ingredient that is risqué to a restricted diet. I will eventually try some home- made salad dressings but for all intensive purposes old faithful ( oil and vinegar ) will do just fine.



The result :
If a dish has garlic and mushrooms in it, it is very difficult for me to be dissatisfied with the end result. However, I will say that in this particular recipe the savory flavor of the stuffing complimented the sweetness of the red bell pepper very nicely. And serving a salad as the side eliminates overpowering the main dish.
As far as nutritional value goes I usually choose red bell peppers over green, not only because I like the sweet tangy flavor better, but because they actually have 11 times the beta carotene and double the vitamin C of green bell peppers. Mushrooms pack in the potassium and iron while the brown rice supplies your fiber. And lets not forget the ever so popular ( but I believe, still unproven) heart benefits of garlic. In short it turned out to be delicious and nutritious!

Variations :
Next time I may experiment with a little bit more colorful vegetables in the stuffing , maybe some asparagus to throw things off a bit. I would also like to replace the rice with quinoa to add additional nutrients to the dish. Although brown rice is loaded with fiber, quinoa offers significant amounts of Iron, potassium, protein and Folacin, not to mention a list of other essential nutrients.

Note about rice:
I love rice, but it has taken me a very long time to perfect making it. A few years ago A friend’s dad showed me his trick to making the perfect rice and it has not lead me wrong yet.
1. Poor however much rice you want in to your pot
2. Rinse with cold water THREE times.
3. Poor enough water into the pot so that when the rice is settled evenly on the bottom of the pot you can rest the tip of your finger on the top of the rice and the water reaches the first crease of your finger. Confusing? I hope not cause it is very easy and works like a charm.
4. Turn your flame on high till the water boils, cover and turn to low for 20 min then voila!!!!
For darker colored rice you may need to add a little more water and it will take longer than 20 min, just eyeball it till little holes form in your rice from the water being all absorbed.

Warning! Avoid the urge to lift the cover and do not stir or fluff during cooking .