Dharma’s Mom’s Yummy Stuffed Peppers with Anchovies
My mom is a really good cook. She just makes the most yummy stuff. Every now and then I get a hankering for something that I remember her making back when I lived at home. If I am lucky I will remember the dish while I talk with her on the phone. Sometimes I will even get a recipe (she will sometimes refuse if she thinks it is not good for me.)
During a recent phone call I remembered her stuffed peppers with anchovies, and she thought they would be good for me.
There is a tricky part of getting a recipe from my mother. Like many Italian mom’s, she does not measure her ingredients. I seem to have inherited this trait; sometimes when people ask me for my recipes I have this same problem. Many of my recipes are an incremental build up of experience and experimentation that has slowly made the recipe, well, the recipe. This makes remembering how to make something a little more difficult. Since I cook less than I used to, I will often have to have a real good mental image of the dish before I start to cook. Having that image in my mind of what the texture, flavor, look, and smell of a dish will often lead me back to the recipe. This is often what I need to do when I try to recreate a recipe from a list of ingredients that my mother has given me. A kind of sensual sleuth, ferreting out the culinary secrets from mental images of the past.
This stuffed pepper recipe from my mother is no different. As I talked on the phone with my mom, I lead her through the physical actions of cooking the red peppers. Slowly, I can get the vague measurements like “some of this” and “just enough” to descriptions more measurable like “a handful” and a small or large spoon. Then I will make the recipe, and do the work of trying to imagine if the amounts make sense in my mind. After one or two attempts at the recipe, I can get pretty close. By the third or fourth attempt, I usually have a recipe which is a variation all my own.
This recipe is simple yet very tasty. The first attempt came pretty darn close to my mother’s original, and I’m not sure I would change a thing.
Stuffed Peppers with Anchovies
5 typical size red bell peppers, or four large ones
1 large can (28 oz) of crushed or diced tomatoes
1 tin of anchovies (with or without capers)
2 tablespoons of rice for each pepper
1 box of raisins
1 half cup of grated Romano cheese
1 table spoon of dry oregano
1 half teaspoon of crushed red pepper (or to taste, it should have just a hint of a bite)
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
Prep
Chop up the anchovies (I nearly chop them into paste) then put everything in a bowl except for the bell peppers, (include the oil from the tin of the anchovies) and mix it all up.
Cut the tops off of the bell peppers and save the tops (the tops will be put back on the top of the peppers once they are stuffed). I cut round the top and pull them off. Take the seeds out of the peppers and cut the seeds off of the tops.
Place two cups of water in a large stock pot. I used a 6 quart stock pot.
Fill each red pepper with the mixed stuffing, place the top back on the pepper, and stand the pepper in the pot.
Cooking
Cook the peppers covered on the stove top, with the temperature on high till the water comes to a boil. Once the water boils, lower the temperature and cook at simmer till the rice is cooked or about an hour.
Adjustments
The recipe came out just great. I made the recipe with the crushed tomatoes, although next time I’m going to try diced. My mom gets a can of whole peeled tomatoes and chops them up herself. Next time I may change it up just a touch, and this is only because of our particular tastes: I would be to add maybe one more clove garlic, and maybe a half box more of raisins.
Yummy… Thanks mom.
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