Eggs in a Pepper

After making the Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers a while back I thought about other food to stuff peppers with. We have a lot of green pepper from our garden so I thought I would experiment. I wanted to have an omelette one day, but I wanted to have that omelette in the pepper. I wasn't exactly sure how it would turn out, but it was worth a try.

Eggs in a Pepper

1 small or medium bell pepper
1 egg
veggies of your choice

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Remove the stem, seeds, and inner flesh of the pepper. Beat the egg with some veggies (avocado and tomato and my case) and poured the mixture into the pepper. Depending on how big your pepper is, depends on how much egg and veggies you can add. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until egg is cooked and pepper is soft.

I cut the pepper in half, added some ground black pepper, and rather enjoyed it! When choosing veggies, avoid ones that contain a lot of water. I know from experience that frozen spinach (even once drained) does not work too well. It makes the eggs very watery which extends the cooking time if you want to have a nice firm egg. I also recommend using smaller peppers, just enough to fit one egg and desired veggies, as the cooking time could extend to almost an hour with a larger pepper with more stuffing. As you can see, the egg tends to overflow during cooking but that is okay.

I think this could make a potentially fantastic (and very cute) appetizer. I have seen some mini bell peppers around, and as long as you could scrounge for ones that would stand upright, it would work well. Since they are so small, I could see a variety herbs, spices and finely chopped veggies, being added to the mixture. How dainty they would be.

I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend, I know I have been. Even with all this free time I am behind in my postings and have a line-up of new dishes to post about. Tomorrow I hope to write about a Mexican inspired meal I made with my friend Will which includes an amazing new guacamole recipe and homemade whole-wheat tortilla chips.

Crostini and Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers

For my parent's anniversary they received a wonderful gift basket from a friend with lots of Italian food products. It came with a jar of mushroom bruschetta and ever since, my Mom and I have been thinking about eating it with some nice crusty bread. While we were at the store yesterday we picked up a whole-wheat french baguette. We had all that we needed.

Before we began I wanted to make sure I would like this mushroom bruschetta. It looked delicious but I had no idea what it would taste like. So I tasted a bit and wasn't a big fan. I love mushrooms but didn't enjoy this preserve at all. So this led to creating two different kinds of crostini since my Mom liked the mushroom brushcetta.

I sliced the baguette thinly. Normally when making crostini you would toast the slices first, and then top them, but I was a little impatient. I topped half of the fresh slices with the mushroom bruschetta, and half with thinly sliced tomato and jarred hot banana peppers. Then I sprinkled them all with a bit of Parmesan cheese. I set the oven to broil and they took about 5 minutes to toast. So simple and delicious!

I had my crostini with barbecued eggplant and zucchini that my Dad had made the day before. I am not quite sure how he does it, but this is the BEST way to eat eggplant and zucchini. I will make a post on that recipe in the future.

For dinner I got together with Jenna to make a recipe from Healthy Girl Cooking. We have been eying multiple recipes from this site, and finally got around to making something. We decided to make Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers.

Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers, modified from healthygirlcooking.com

3 large bell peppers that stand up well
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup beans (any kind you like)
1 cup corn
1 tomato, chopped finely
10 basil leaves, chopped finely
parmesan cheese

Mix the quinoa, beans, corn, tomato and basil in a bowl. Cut off the tops of the peppers and cut out any seeds and white flesh.

Stuff pepper with as much filling as it can handle.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top and bake for another 3-5 minutes.

Boy were these guys filling. They are very nutritious as well. They were lacking in the flavour department though. I would not serve these to guests until making some adjustments with the flavour. We brainstormed some ideas to increase the delicious factor for these peppers and came up with a few ideas:

• after filling the peppers half-way, add a layer of cottage or goat's cheese, before filling the rest with the stuffing, OR mix in the cheese with the stuffing.
  
• add a bit of salt, simple as that.
• add cumin or coriander; there are endless possibilities in the spice department here.
• cooking the quinoa in flavoured broth or tomato juice, or mixing in some tomato paste after cooking.

Any other ideas for making these stuffed peppers spectacular?