Peck of
Pretty Peppers Cookbook
While Anne and Dick retired from growing peppers, these 40 recipes for
preparing peppers and chiles remain exciting. They wrote:
The
Chestnut Ridge Farm Book of Peppers is a guide to preserving and
preparing the more than thirty varieties of peppers that we grew in the
Appalachian mountains without artificial fertilizers or chemicals, from
the sweetest peppers to the hottest chiles, with recipes to help you
enjoy each variety.
Stuffed
Sweet Tapered Peppers
Anne developed this sumptuous recipe
to take full advantage of the extraordinary sweetness of "Horn of the
Bull" and other long tapered sweet yellow and red peppers. When
the peppers are fresh, this is truly food for the gods.
1/2 cup wild rice (not mixture)
6 long tapered sweet peppers
1-1/2 tablespoons butter
1-1/2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup cream
1 additional tablespoon butter
8 mushrooms, sliced
8 fresh basil leaves
1/2 lb. imitation crab, already cooked
Boil wild rice in 2 cups of water for 1 hour; and set aside. Cut
tops off the peppers and slit part way down one side for access.
Clean out seeds and membranes. Set aside.
Make a bechamel sauce by melting butter in saucepan, stirring in
flower, adding cream, and stirring until the sauce thickens.
Blanche the peppers in boiling water for 5 minutes while you are
combining the following ingredients for stuffing.
Saute the mushrooms in butter. Add the basil, then the
crab. Then add the bechamel sauce and continue to warm and stir
while adding as much wild rice as needed to achieve the volume of
stuffing required.
Stuff the peppers and serve immediately, with the remaining wild rice
on the side. Serves 6.