RECIPE: Beef Curry Stuffed Orange Peppers

Our farm store this year had both yellow and orange peppers for the first time ever!  When the green and yellow peppers arrived a few weeks ago, I wrapped them in paper towels, and then stored them in the fridge inside a paper bag.  When I pulled them out today they were like new!  So...for this recipe I'm using a mix of yellow, orange, red, and green, all from our farm store!! 

The last time I posted a stuffed pepper recipe, the stuffing was made from red rice and adzuki beans.  Now that we're eating low carb, I could have just replaced the rice with ground meat, but I decided to make a keema curry.  I kept the beans - they add some texture.

There are two keema recipes on this blog:

North Indian Keema and South Indian Keema.  They are similar, but the spice mixtures are different.  Use whichever one appeals to you most! 

Beef Curry Stuffed Orange Peppers

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

• 7-8 medium size bell peppers, preferably orange or yellow
• One recipe keema made with 1.5 pounds of beef 
• OPTIONAL: 1/3 - 1/2 of a 15oz can adzuki beans, drained
• 6oz blanched spinach or kale, minced 
• For the Tomato Cream Sauce: 
• 1 T. ghee 
• 2 t. cumin
• 2 t. garlic powder
• 2-3 t. MILD kashmiri chili powder depending on your heat tolerance
• 1 jar (approx 20 oz) tomato passata or puree
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 t. himalayan pink salt 
• 8oz mozarella* cheese, grated  

*If you don't have mozarella, you can use oaxaca, but don't add it until you take the pan out of the oven.  Sprinkle it on the cooked peppers, cover the pan for 5 minutes, then uncover and let the whole dish cool.  The residual heat in the peppers will melt the cheese as the rest of the dish cools.

INSTRUCTIONS:

I make these in a Le Creuset casserole, because it has a tight fitting lid.  You can also use a baking pan and cover it with parchment-lined foil (please don't let the foil tough your food!). 

Choose your baking vessel and make sure your peppers will fit snugly in it.  If they aren't snug, they will fall over as they bake. Remove the peppers, cut 1" off the tops, and remove the seeds from the insides.  Don't toss the tops.  Put the empty peppers back in the pan and set them aside.  

Make the tomato cream sauce:  

From the pepper tops you removed, cut away all the pepper flesh from around the stems and mince it. 

Over medium heat, melt 1 T ghee and sweat the minced peppers until soft.  Add the cumin, garlic and pepper powders and stir for a minute or two.  Add the tomato puree and the tomato paste and stir to combine.  If your tomato puree is chunky, transfer the sauce to a tall container and use an immersion blander to smooth it out.

Stir in the cream and the salt.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  I like the tomato sauce to be spicier than the keema, but you should adjust to your heat tolerance.  The sauce should be quite thick, because the cheese and the peppers will both exude some liquid.

Make the keema adding the aduki beans and spinach.  This can be made the day before, and refrigerated overnight, but heat it up the next day before filling the peppers. Taste and adjust seasoning.  The keema should be seasoned to account for the peppers.

Preheat the oven to 400F (375F convection) and set a rack in the middle of the oven.

Put 2 T sauce into the bottom of each pepper.

Fill the peppers 3/4 full with keema.  Depending on the size of your peppers you may have keema left over.

Top the keema with additional 2-3 T. sauce.  Pour the remaining sauce around the sides of the peppers. 

Top each pepper with grated cheese.   Cover the pan, either with the lid or a sheet of parchment-backed foil.

Bake 20 minutes with the cover on.  If you don't cover the pan, it will take much longer to cook and the cheese will burn. 

Remove the cover and cook an additional 10 minutes, until the peppers are cooked through and the cheese is lightly browned.  

Remove the pan from the oven and let it rest 10-30 minutes.  Be careful when you eat this - the center will be very HOT!!! 

To serve, transfer one pepper to a soup plate, cut it in half, and spread some sauce over the cut sides.

 

 

Did you know that different color bell peppers contain different nutrients?  I learned this just recently:

Very roughly, the color differences are:

• Orange: particularly notable for zeaxanthin,  β-cryptoxanthin (vitamin A) and β-carotene
• Red: especially rich in capsanthin and capsorubin, also high in vitamin C 
• Yellow: more lutein and zeaxanthin in many cultivars, both of particular interest for eye health
• Green: immature fruit, with much more chlorophyll and generally lower concentrations of the carotenoids that accumulate as peppers ripen, but can have decent amounts of lutein

Carotenoids are fat-soluble. The ghee in the keema and cream in the tomato sauce should improve absorption of the carotenoids. Heat will reduce some vitamin C, but cooking also makes some carotenoids more bioavailable.