Baking cookies, cakes and bread infuse your home with mouth watering scents, turning your kitchen into a five-star bakery, add to that the essence of roasted vegetables and your kitchen will accelerate all
your senses into high gear.
Here’s a recipe that will do just that.
Stuffed Bell Peppers
Ingredients:
1/2 lb. lean ground beef
1/2 lb. Italian sausage (sweet or spicy, your choice)
1/4 cup of dry red or white wine (the good stuff that you would drink, not the cooking wine)
1 stalk celery, diced
4 sweet peppers (red, orange or yellow)
3/4 cup COOKED white rice (I cook the rice in chicken broth, to give it that much more flavor)
1 TBSP freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 TBSP freshly grated Romano cheese
1 tomato, diced
handful of fresh basil, chopped
10 Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
1/3 cup mozzarella, shredded or sliced thinly
1/2 cup tomato sauce (click here for my marinara sauce recipe)
salt and red chili flakes to taste
Directions:
- Heat oven to 350F
- Cook rice and set aside.
- Wash and dry the peppers, slice in half, and remove the seeds and set aside.
- Chop the tops you removed from the peppers into small pieces
- Heat up a skillet, add the wine, sausage and ground beef, chopped celery and cook for about 5 minutes.
- Then add the chopped pieces of peppers and stir, lower heat to medium and cook until meat is brown and done.
- Once the meat is done, remove from heat and add: Parmesan, Romano cheeses, tomato, olives, basil and rice, and stir well until it’s all mixed.
- Taste the mixture, so you can season with salt and red chili flakes.
- Line a baking dish with parchment, or spray with a non-stick spray
- Fill each half of the peppers with equal amounts of the meat/rice mixture.
- Arrange peppers in baking dish.
- Top each pepper with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.
- Cover dish and bake for 45 minutes.
- Remove cover and bake an additional 5 – 10 minutes, until mozzarella on top is melted
Selena Robins, Author 
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