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Creole Peppers
Select half a dozen red or green sweet peppers, cut in half, and remove seed. Boil 1 cupful of rice, drain and dry. Use 1 cupful of canned tomatoes, or 6 fresh tomatoes, scald, peel, and chop, and add to the rice; season with 1 teaspoonful salt and onion juice, or 1 small grated onion; mix all together and fill the peppers; fry them in 6 tablespoonfuls hot oil. Then remove to baking-pan; add 1/2 cupful of stock and bake three-quarters of an hour.
A stuffed pepper that starts in the frying pan rather than the oven, which is what gives it more character than the usual baked version. The recipe assumes you know how to keep the halves upright and how hot a moderate oven is.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven heat and does not describe one; 350F for the stated three-quarters of an hour is a reasonable modern reading. The filling is already cooked, so the time is about softening the pepper and reducing the stock.
- Fry the filled halves cut side downFrying the filled halves -- The recipe simply says to fry the stuffed peppers in hot oil before baking. Setting them filling-side down first will brown the surface of the rice; six tablespoons of oil is enough for a wide skillet if you work in batches.
- Dry the rice properly"Drain and dry" means spreading the boiled rice on a tray or returning it to the dry hot pot for a minute or two. Wet rice will not hold together in the peppers and will steam rather than brown in the oil.
- Canned tomatoesCanned tomatoes of the period were generally packed whole in their own juice. Drain a cup of chopped canned tomatoes before mixing them in, or the filling turns to soup.
- Onion juiceAn old shortcut for onion flavour without texture: a halved onion pressed on a grater or reamer yields a spoonful or so of juice. A small grated onion, as the recipe allows, does the same job.
- Stock in the panThe half cupful of stock goes around the peppers, not over them, and keeps the bottoms from scorching. Any light meat or vegetable stock works; water with a pinch of salt will do at a pinch.
- YieldTwelve halves, serving four as a main dish or six alongside something else. If your peppers are large, a cup of rice may not stretch to fill all twelve halves generously.