Cooking in the Time of Covid

Scrap-Stuffed Peppers. So named because I made them from scraps around the house that weren't enough to do anything with on their own.

You will need:

1. 6 bell peppers
2. 1 bag (~2 cups?) frozen riced cauliflower from Costco
3. 3 stalks celery
4. 2 x 1/2 inch smoked porkchops
5. 4 x ~3" diameter tomatoes
6. 1/2 large onion
7. ~1 carrot worth of baby carrots

Start heating a large pot of salted water to boil. Cut the tops off of your bell peppers. Empty out the seeds. Reserve the tops, and put the cup-portion aside.

Cut the main meaty portion off of the smoked porkchops. Assuming your chops have bones, put the bones into a pot with 1 cup water, heat over a medium heat, cover tightly. Cut the meat small, not being afraid to shred it in the process.Put the shredded meat into a large mixing bowl.

Finely dice your half onion, celery, and carrot and add to the meat in the mixing bowl. Cut each tomato into 6-8 wedges (don't stress about this, they're going to cook down, we just want lots of surface area).

Finely dice the bell pepper tops and add to the mixing bowl.

By now the pot of water is probably boiling. Add the hollowed peppers to the boiling water. These will take twenty minutes or so to cook, but give them a poke every few minutes. You don't want them completely soft, there should be a little bit of give when you poke them. Once done, gently pull them out of the hot water and set aside to cool.

Check the pork chop bones. Once the water has boiled down to a half cup, add another half cup to bring it back up to a cup and let it boil down a second time to a half cup. Remove and discard the bones and add the cauliflower, then cover while heating for five minutes. After five minutes, stir the pot, then re-cover. Keep stirring every few minutes until the cauliflower is hot and partially cooked. Then remove from heat and dump the pot into the mixing bowl.

With all the ingredients in the mixing bowl, gentle mix everything together. In a large pan, add a few tablespoons of olive oil and heat on a medium heat. Once the oil begins to smoke slightly, dump the contents of the mixing bowl into the large pan. Stir to prevent anything from getting stuck to the bottom of the pan. Cover tightly and start building your add-in flavorings.

This is really up to you, and it is going to need to reflect the ingredients you have. Pork and brassica always invite sharp flavors, so in a bowl I combined some wasabi, a squirt of sriracha, some cooking sherry, a generous amount of worcestershire sauce, a dash of soy sauce, then whisked it all together. I also took sprigs of fresh rosemary and parsley from my garden, minced them finely and added them in as well. This add-in was dumped into the pan with the food and stirred together so everything would have a chance to meld. A crack of black pepper and some sweet hungarian paprika are added as well, and the pan was covered tightly.

Start pre-heating the oven to 350 degrees.

Every once in a while, open the cover and stir the contents. We have added a lot of liquid, and many of the vegetables will release fluids as they cook. Keep cooking over a medium heat. This will cook the vegetables, let the flavors mingle, slowly drive off the moisture. Carefully adjust for taste, remembering that as the moisture is driven off, the flavor will intensify. By the time all the moisture is gone (roughly a half hour to an hour) all the vegetables are cooked, the bell peppers have cooled, and you are ready to move on the the next step.

Place the peppers upright in a cassarole dish. Using a large spoon, start stuffing the peppers with the filling mix from the pan. If any of the peppers have split, that's okay, they'll taste the same. One of my peppers completely fell in half, and I just lay both parts down and poured filling in the middle. It ended up tasting great, nobody cares. Nobody. Cares.

Place the stuffed peppers in the now hot oven. After 50 minutes, take out, and they should be done and crispy, but there's one last thing. Sprinkle shredded mozarella on top. Place back in the hot oven for 10 for minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately.

I have been trying to find new uses for things around the kitchen, trying to eat a bit healthier, and I also have all these little bits and bobs that were never enough on their own to do anything with, so I decided to try to find a way to combine them. The result was shockingly delicious. Light, tasty, filling, pretty diet friendly, also pretty oxalate-friendly. It balances vegetables with a little protein and fat, packs enough flavor to punch you in the tongue, and I enjoyed it greatly. I think it really worked because I embraced what ingredients were there, rather than trying to pretend the cauliflower was rice and the pork was beef and using the same spicing. I would much rather work with the ingredients I have and make something delicious than worry about how exactly I am recreating a different dish. But then, that's me, you may prefer differently.

Pan-"roasted" brussels sprouts

This is a great recipe that allows you to use scraps and ends scattered around the pantry. I had three raw sweet italian sausages that needed to be cooked. Maybe you have some bacon, who knows? Use what you have on hand.

I sliced up three raw sweet italian sausages and sauteed them in a frying pan until browned, then added one large diced onion, cooking until soft, deglaze with a dash of chicken stock, then setting aside.

While they cook, take a pound or two of brussels sprouts (you'll need to estimate the amount) and trim the end, then half lengthwise. Place facedown in a cold, dry frying pan. Fill the entire pan with facedown brussels sprouts- if you have a big pan, you may be able to fit more than a pound. It may be wiser to trim and add the sprouts to the pan as you go you so do not accidentally process too many. Drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil over the brussels sprouts, crack some salt and pepper over, then cover and heat over a medium-high heat for five minutes. After those five minutes, remove the cover and continue to cook two to three more minutes.

As the brussels sprouts cook, dice one bell pepper (or two smaller peppers- something spicy might be nice), juice and zest a lemon, salt, pepper, sweet hungarian paprika, and a teaspoon of dijon mustard. Combine in a bowl. 

Once the brussels sprouts are done, turn off the heat and add the bell pepper sauce, a generous sprinkle of freshly grated parmesan cheese, and quickly toss together with a wooden spoon. Add the sausages and onions and stir together. Serve immediately. If you need a starch, serve over white rice, but if you are watching your carbs you can enjoy by itself. At the end of it all, made two large bowls worth, but if you have some rice or another starch, can easily spread over multiple meals.