The most fragrant, colorful and beautiful vegetables of the summer month are peppers . They contain very few calories and many virtues. In Sicily, many believe that the only way to enjoy them at their best is to prepare them stuffed with a filling and, later, fry them. Stuffed peppers in most cases cchiananu and scinnunu, that is, they act like an elevator in an up and down system that hinders digestion. How to reduce the feeling of heaviness? Not everyone knows that once the film that covers them is eliminated, the discomfort decreases considerably.
But the peppers they are delicious cooked in any way: with pasta, with potatoes in soup, in couscous , with rice, with chicken... and what about peperonata! The ones cooked in the oven, the very ones that our greengrocers display every summer afternoon in their putìa , become the basis of wonderful salads.
Stuffed peppers: variations
But let's go back to the mute ones. There are mainly two recipes with stuffed peppers in Sicily: with meat and with passatelli, pine nuts, capers and salted sardines. In the latter there are those who replace the sardines with salami, there are those who add olives, those who mix with beaten egg, and so on. There is always plenty of pecorino or caciocavallo cheese, either grated or in pieces. And, in addition, breadcrumbs ( a muddica ) are obligatory, whether toasted ( atturrata ) or not.
Various versions arise from these two preparations. Naturally, all of them are excellent and require moderation in eating them, especially if you choose frying.
My grandmother cooked peppers stuffed with rice , seasoned with chopped tomatoes and basil or just with a little white ragù. Mother prepares them Palermo style, filled with minced meat ( capuliata ), and in the lighter variant with island flavours. So, me too. Almost always cooked in the oven , they are stuffed whole or cut in half like little boats.
Have fun and remember that the cuisine of fillings has a very important tradition, to be rediscovered and supported in every historical moment.
Catch up, folks! Do you have any risotto left over, bread, cheese, boiled potatoes, meatballs, boiled meat, a few cooked pieces of sausage? Or do you have to make do with just eggs, herbs, breadcrumbs or the usual can of tuna? Well, mute pees , even if they deviate from the original, are right for you.
And here is a version made more special by dried tomatoes made with our hands .
Ingredients for 4 people)
- 4 small yellow peppers , possibly with a square base (so they can stand upright )
- 6 slices of stale bread or sandwich bread
- 1 large white onion
- 4 anchovy fillets in oil
- 30 datterini tomatoes
- 8 dried tomatoes in oil
- 1 tablespoon desalted capers
- 200 g of primo sale cut into cubes
- 100 g of grated Grana Padano
- A bunch of mint
- Extra virgin olive oil to taste
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Method
Wash the peppers and remove the caps. Empty them by removing filaments and seeds, sprinkle the inside with salt and leave them upside down.
Clean the mint and let it dry well. Wash the cherry tomatoes , slice them and place them in a colander with salt , so that they lose excess water. Let them rest for half an hour, then transfer them into a bowl with a dressed and crushed clove of garlic .
Cut the dried tomato fillets into small pieces and chop the capers with a knife.
Remove the crust from the bread and cut it into squares . Chop the onion and brown it in a pan with the oil and chopped anchovies . Then add a couple of tablespoons of water to deglaze. Stir often so that the anchovies melt, as soon as the onion is wilted, add the bread: it will have to absorb the liquid from the bottom and then toast, but gently so that the onion does not burn. Let cool. Turn on the oven at 190° in static mode.
At this point create the filling by kneading with your hands: in a bowl add the bread , the cherry tomatoes once again drained of their liquid and the garlic removed, the dried tomatoes , the coarsely chopped mint , the first salt , the parmesan and some ground pepper . Season with salt and add a drizzle of oil to bind better (maybe that of dried tomatoes if it is as tasty as ours).
Make sure that the filling is a well-compact dough.
Stuff the peppers and finish with a drizzle of oil.
Place them in an oiled baking dish , with their caps placed next to them. Cook them covered with aluminum foil for 15 minutes . Then, uncover them and continue cooking for about 30 minutes .
Of course, you can choose to fry them.
Leave to rest for 10 minutes and serve accompanied with baked potatoes; we flavored them with our herbs.
You can, however, surround them with a mixed salad made special by the leftover bread. As? Chop up the crust and make a coarse toasted breadcrumbs ( muddica atturrata ), to which you can add toasted almonds , also coarsely chopped. Add everything to your salad.
But, if you would like a good plate of spaghetti seasoned as you like, this crumble (as the Anglo-Saxons call it) will enhance your recipe.
NB remember that the peppers cooked in this way are not peeled before cooking, but rather when they are served on plates.
Buon Appetito in the name of ancient tradition and family warmth.
