Summer vegetables are in season and so delicious. I couldn’t resist the colourful capsicums today and so here is my recipe for capsicums with a rice stuffing. These contain all vegetarian ingredients and are suitable for those on a vegan or vegetarian diet.
Capsicums stuffed with rice
Ingredients
- Capsicums of any colour though red and yellow are the sweetest
- 3-5 cups hot vegetable stock
- olive oil to spoon over prepared capsicums
For the rice stuffing
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 tblsp oil
- I can chopped tomatoes
- 1 tblsp tomato paste
- 3/4 cup mint leaves finely chopped
- 1 cup of parsley finely chopped
- 1 heaped tablespoon medium grain rice for every capsicum plus one extra. If the capsicums are large add a couple more tablespoons of rice.
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese
Method for the rice stuffing
- Fry the onion in the oil until soft, about 5 mins
- Add the chopped tomatoes, and 1 tblsp of tomato paste stirring it in well
- Add the mint leaves, chopped parsley, salt and pepper
- Add a cup of chicken or vegetable stock
- Cook for about 15 minutes on a medium heat, checking from time to time that the liquid is not too dry and adding extra water if required
- Stir in the rice adding a little water if too dry.
- Cook for 10 mins, stirring often to prevent the rice from sticking. Mixture should be just dry ,add a little water if you need
- Take off the heat and stir in 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
To make up the stuffed capsicums
- Pre-heat oven to 180 C
- Use a baking dish that will hold the capsicums snugly to prevent them toppling over as they cook.
- Use a paring knife to cut 1.5 cm around the stem to create a little cap. Be careful not to score the body of the capsicum
- remove the cap carefully and cut away any seeds.
- Making sure not to score the sides of the capsicum use your fingers to remove inner seeds and white ribs and then wash the capsicum out.
- Place the clean capsicums and their little caps into a suitable baking dish.
- When the rice stuffing is cooked spoon some of the mixture into each capsicum leaving a little at the top to allow for further expansion of the rice.
- Cover with the little cap, repeating this for each capsicum.
- Pour in enough hot vegetable stock to cover about 2/3 of the way up the capsicums. ( I have used about 3 1/2 cups in the picture below)
- Drizzle a little olive oil over each capsicum
- Carefully transfer the baking dish into the oven and cover loosely with foil
- Cook for 1 hour then test to see if the skin of the capsicum is tender and well cooked.
- You may wish to remove them from the oven when they are just cooked so that you can transfer them easily to a serving dish, or you could like me, cook them longer (about another hour) till they are a little collapsed to develop the flavours more and enjoy them a little more cooked. The choice is yours.
- The will taste even better the next day and you can re-heat them pouring a little of the juices around them into the centre of the capsicum. They are delicious hot or cold.
The Grantham Gardener 