Continuing on our meat free odyssey, tonight we set sail across the Atlantic and headed for Mexico, courtesy of Thomasina Miers and her smokey stuffed peppers. Since Sainsbury’s delivered very small peppers, I stretched things by using 3 gorgeous dinky Baby Bear squash from last year’s allotment crop and it was hard to chose which vehicle we preferred for this amazing hot, smoky, cheesy stuffing.
The stuffing consisted of a chopped shallot, garlic, mango, finely diced cooked potato, soft goats’ cheese, chipotles en adobe*, oregano, white wine and a splash of balsamic. This was all started in a frying pan then stuffed into the peppers & squash and baked at 180c for half an hour, finished with a grating of parmesan and given another 5 minutes. The contrast between the sweet vegetables and the smokey, deeply savoury stuffing was wonderful and the heat from the chipotles enough to give me a good ol’ chilli high!
*The chipotles were bought online from mexgrocer.co.uk and have been sitting in the larder for some time. They are smoked jalapeno chillies canned in a red sauce that typically contains tomato puree, paprika, salt, onions, oil, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves and oregano and are used for making sauces, chipotle mayonnaise, rubs as well as other recipes. They added a really different flavour dimension to the dish so now I have started the tin I’m keen to find more recipes to use them.
Today’s other dish was a quick batch of coffee cup cakes as Mum & A came for a birthday cup of tea. I just used my normal 2 egg sponge recipe and made a cup of espresso, adding half to the sponge mix and half to some butter icing. M & I decorated them with some chocolate powder and chocolate letters we found in the cupboard – Happy Birthday A!
