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Peppers with Macaroni
Cut the tops from green peppers, remove seeds and let stand for ten minutes in boiling water. Chop cooked macaroni into small pieces and mix with a thin cream Drain the peppers, fill them with the macaroni, adding to each a generous spoon of grated cheese. Bake in a granite dish with very little water until the peppers are tender. If covered they will not be dry when cooked. sauce.
A straightforward stuffed pepper, though the typesetting has scrambled one line: the macaroni is mixed with a thin cream sauce, the word "sauce" having wandered to the end of the paragraph.
- Thin cream sauceA period thin white sauce is roughly 1 tablespoon each butter and flour to 1 cup milk, seasoned with salt and a little pepper. It should coat the macaroni loosely rather than bind it; the pepper releases liquid as it bakes.
- Granite dishGranite ware -- Granite ware is enamelled steel, not stone. Any covered baking dish works; enamel or glass is an easy choice, though peppers are only mildly acidic and the practical difference from other materials here is slight.
- Oven heatThe original gives none. A moderate oven, 350F, for 35 to 45 minutes covered will bring green bell peppers to tender without collapsing them.
- Keep it coveredThis is the hinge. The recipe says so plainly, and it is right: uncovered, the exposed macaroni dries into a crust and the cheese scorches before the pepper wall softens. Lid on, with a scant quarter inch of water in the dish.
- The blanchTen minutes in boiling water is generous for modern thin-walled bell peppers, which will already be half cooked. Five is enough, and the peppers should be drained cut side down so they do not carry water into the filling.
- Cheese'Grated cheese' in an American book of this period usually means a firm Cheddar or a dry grating cheese. A tablespoon or so per pepper, stirred through rather than only sprinkled on top, seasons the macaroni properly.
- MacaroniPeriod recipes generally boiled macaroni well past al dente before it was chopped. Cut long tubes into half-inch lengths, or simply use a short shape; undercook it slightly since it will absorb sauce in the oven.
- YieldFigure two medium peppers per person as a light main, one as a side. About 2 cups of dressed macaroni fills four peppers.
Stuffed green peppers appear in American cookbooks from the later nineteenth century onward. The macaroni-and-cream-sauce filling fits turn-of-the-century household thrift: cooked pasta and a basic white sauce were both cheap and assumed to be to hand, and cheese did the work of meat.