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Stuffed Bell Peppers

This is a recipe by Amanda Evans and originally calls for Chiquino Peppers

Ingredients

Scale
  • 8 Chiquino or other small peppers
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 50g picante chorizo sausage. Peeled and cut into small cubes
  • 1 medium sized potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
  • ½ a small onion, finely chopped
  • 6 stoned black olives, roughly chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • ¼ teaspoon fresh lemon thyme leaves
  • ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
  • squeeze lemon juice
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 150C
  2. Slice the top off the peppers, discarding the stalk and seeds from inside.
  3. Place on a baking tray and drizzle with about 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. With your hands, rub the oil over the surface of each of the peppers and the inside coating evenly. Sprinkle with salt and pepper inside and out.
  4. Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until soft but keeping their shape, turning over during cooking to ensure a nice even brown colour.
  5. Remove from the oven and if you prefer, remove the skin from the peppers when cool enough to handle. We left the skin on ours, liking the colour and shine it picks up from being roasted.
  6. To make the filling, heat a tablespoon of oil in a heavy based frying pan. Add the chorizo and cook for 3-4 minutes, turning frequently so the fat starts to render out of the sausage. Add the onion and potato and fry gently stirring frequently until the potato starts to soften and brown.
  7. Add the garlic, salt and pepper, Thyme leaves and paprika and put a lid on the pan. This way the filling will continue to fry, but the steam kept inside the pan will help to soften the potatoes. Take off the lid and squash the potatoes with the back of the wooden spoon.
  8. Continue to cook, lifting the lid off the pan to stir occasionally and squashing the potatoes a little until the filling is soft. Squashing the potatoes will make the filling easier to stuff and help the cooking, but you want the filling to have some texture, so don’t try to make ‘mashed potatoes’.
  9. Stir in the olives, squeeze of lemon juice and check the seasoning adding salt and pepper as required.
  10. Leave to cool slightly then stuff the filling into the peppers.
  11. Return to the roasting tray and warm back through for 2-3 minutes. Serve on a tapas dish with a drizzle of olive oil and a few thyme sprigs or chopped flat leaf parsley to serve.