Ukrainian Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Cubanelle peppers comes in many colors as they ripen.
A tapered pepper, it is sweet and mild, its thin wall
is especially suitable for quick cooking. Cubanelle

peppers are unique, growing in imperfect shapes and
changing color from green/yellow to shades of orange
and red. Popular in dishes of Spanish, Italian and
Slavic kitchens. I first tasted this made by our cousin,
Natasha, who remembers her mother making it in the
Ukraine. She used ground veal and chopped carrots.
I loved it but used the meat loaf combination of ground
beef, veal and pork mix instead. I used fresh stewed
plum tomatoes instead of canned crushed tomatoes. (see previous recipe for tomato sauce)
I think you can also use Italian sweet peppers as an alternative.

Ingredients

1 lb ground veal (or 1 lb ground beef/pork/veal mix)
6 Sweet Cubanelle Peppers or Italian sweet peppers
1 egg
1/4 cup rice
olive oil
1 large onion finely chopped
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 teasp. paprika                                
1 teasp.salt
1/2 teasp. ground pepper
1 teasp. oregano
2 large cans crushed tomatoes (or fresh stewed plum tomatoes)


Directions

Core the peppers and remove the seeds and membrane.
For the filling, warm 3 tablespoon olive oil in a pan and saute onions until golden brown, add the chopped garlic and keep stirring for 2 minutes.
In a large bowl, beat 1 egg and add the ground meat, 1/4 cup rice, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper. Mix well together. Add the onions and garlic and mix again. Before filling the peppers, add 3 tablespoons of the tomato sauce. The rice tends to swell during cooking and can make the filling quite solid.
Using your hands, stuff the peppers, loosely.Any left over meat mixture, I saute in a pan and add to the tomato sauce.
Add salt, pepper, paprika and oregano to the sauce.Place the stuffed peppers in a saucepan and cover completely with the tomato sauce, if not covered, add a little water.
Simmer for at least 1 1/2 hours, or until the rice is done, check the skin of the pepper desired tenderness (I like the pepper to be slightly crunchy) and cut one pepper in half to make sure the meat is done.
Serve with pasta.
I also added mushrooms and chopped asparagus, both sauteed first to the sauce.
It’s a fabulous dish, either eaten with no additions, or adding other vegetables, could be mushrooms, corn, asparagus, beans etc.

Stuffed peppers uncooked before sauce has been added

Fresh Tomato Sauce

It is late September and the market is full of bushels of ripe, red plum tomatoes. I like to make sauce from these, freeze them for the winter to use in spaghetti sauce, chili, soups, added to stuffed egg plant, lubi..... basically anything you need tomatoes to enhance the taste. Tomato sauce can be substituted by canned plum tomatoes or crushed tomatoes, but nothing reaches the delicious taste of sauce made from fresh plum tomatoes.
I bought a half bushel of plum tomatoes at the farmer’s market.

Directions:
Fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to the boil
Reduce the heat so the water is barely simmering.
Gently drop 6 tomatoes into the water and leave for a minute, then remove and let drain in a colander. Repeat this process till all tomatoes are done.

Next, with a sharp knife, slit the skin lengthways so there are four slits running vertically down the tomato. Then peel off the skin completely, also slicing out the top part.

Chop the tomatoes and place in a saucepan on low heat, start off covered, stirring from time to time, then remove the lid and let the water evaporate.

From this point you can freeze the tomatoes for later use, or make spaghetti sauce, chili, soup. . . . .  Nothing beats it!