Hi there, this is Chef Bill at the Culinary Institute of America.
And today we're stuffing vegetables with rice and beans,
just the way you might see it in the Greek Islands.
Now, my pan is nice and hot,
and so what I want to do is put some oil in here.
That's olive oil.
And we're gonna take some ground lamb,
and.......
We're gonna cook that just until it's done.
Now, at the same time that this lamb is cooking, I'm gonna add some onions to the pan....
And we'll cook those until they're translucent.
So, this will be the basis of the stuffing for our stuffed vegetables.
The vegetables I'm going to stuff today are green peppers, and I've got one here.
There's a nice little lid and I cleaned out the inside of it just like that.
But I kept the lid intact.
And then also, I have some tomatoes, some nice tomatoes.
There's the lid. I hollowed them out, and I saved everything that came out, and just threw it into the blender,
And that's the liquid that you see right here on my cutting board.
We're gonna put that to work in just a second.
The meat is almost cooked....
It will continue to cook as I carry on with this filling.
The onions are just starting to turn translucent.
So what I'm gonna do is add some garlic to the pan.
There we go....
And a great rule of thumb with garlic.....
As soon as you can smell it, it's time to move forward. Why? Because if the garlic burns it becomes bitter.
We're gonna put some rice in here.... Long grain rice.
That's about a cup of rice. It's.....
remarkable how little rice you actually need to stuff vegetables.
If you need a good rule of thumb, it's about a tablespoon of raw rice per the vegetable that you're gonna stuff.
And now we'll add some flavoring. Here goes some pine nuts.....
Here..... some raisins or currants that have been plumped.
I'm gonna add some seasoning. This is Allspice.
And something that you see in Greece a lot: cinnamon, added to savory dishes.
A couple of bay leaves....
And this really starts to look very much like a rice pilaf.
You know, I'm *cooking* this rice.
The only thing I haven't added at this point is any liquid,
and here it is, right here.
So, if we have a cup of rice, it's gonna take about a cup and a half of liquid.
And that's pretty much what these tomatoes gave me.
If I needed a supplement it with a little stock or water, I could.
And I want this rice to cook a little bit on top of the stove. Maybe a minute or two on top of the stove.
And then I'll take this stuffing and I'll cool it down and I'll put it into the vegetables.
The last thing that I want to add to this stuffing is some herbs.
There's one third dill....
One third parsley and one third mint.
I'll gather it all up. This is a great little lesson in itself.
Be a little bit rough with this.
Gather it all up, and then, by the time you've chopped through it the first time,
you've sort of taken the "fight" out of it.....
And it behaves a little bit better.....
Rice takes about 15 minutes, start to finish, so.... As I said, I want to cook it for about two minutes....
and then we'll take it off the heat.
All these herbs are going to go right into the filling.
I have not seasoned this yet, so here goes a little bit of salt.....
A little bit of pepper.....
And we'll turn that off.
Now......
This is a pretty traditional filling.
What I would like to do is add some of these small red beans to the mix.
And what that will do is it'll bump up the amount of protein that's available to the person that eats this dish,
but it'll also make it taste delicious.
Just so that those beans don't take any of the liquid from the rice, I'll add the bean liquid as well.
And our filling is basically done.
Our filling has had the chance to cool off just a little bit.
You can see I've got all these vegetables that have had their insides taken out,
and they're ready for stuffing.
What you want to do is take some of this stuffing.... well seasoned, a little bit moist.....
And just spoon it into each of these vegetables, so that the vegetable is about 3/4 full.
And the reason for that is when it cooks, the rice will expand,
and you run the risk of your vegetables.... kind of *exploding* if you will.
Then I put it over here into a pan. I will do the same with a pepper.
These take significantly more filling. And......
We'll put that over there.
Okay, so these are all stuffed. I've got some potatoes here.
I'm gonna take, and wedge them, in between the various vegetables
so that they're less inclined to topple over.
These will cook right along with the vegetables. There'll be a little extra treat.... a little "lagniappe."
And then, we need to add some liquid to this pan.
And it really couldn't be simpler.
This is tomato purée.
This is a little bit of vegetable stock, and some nice extra virgin olive oil.
I'm going to take and season that with salt and pepper.
And by the time these vegetables cook,
all the savory flavors and that filling will mingle with this, and it'll be very, very complex.
Anyhow.... Just pour this over the top of all these vegetables.
Keep their lids on.
And then finally, this is a little trick, but I think it's a good one....
Sprinkle some sugar on here. We want these vegetables to taste nice and ripe and sweet,
so a little pinch of sugar goes a long way.
That dish is ready to pop into the oven.
It'll be in the oven at about 375 to 400 F for about an hour or an hour and a half.
And the only thing missing..... is a glass of wine.
These vegetables will hold really, really well for a couple of days in the refrigerator.
I would always take them out, warm them in the oven, just briefly, before you serve them....
But room temperature or hot, they're delicious.
Stuffed vegetables with rice and small red beans, in the style you might find in the Greek Islands.