Wednesday, February 4, 2009

STUFFED VEGETABLES


The other night I made a Filet Kebab recipe from my New Food of Life Persian cookbook. If you've ever had the steak kebabs at a Persian restaurant you'll probably agree with me, they are just out of this world delicious. I am working on an oven version (as opposed to having to cook them on an outside grill). I'll let you know how it goes. The last batch I made wasn't marinated long enough, and then it was too wet in the pan and didn't brown well enough. I'll share the details later, once I find success.  

So with that dinner, we ended up with a lot of leftover rice. I decided to make porcupine meatballs, but once again, I screwed up -- I added too much rice. I first put in 3 eggs, thinking it might still hold it together and the meatball idea could be saved. Nope.

The next thing you know, I'm dumping all sorts of stuff in there.  

3 pieces of whole grain bread - in the blender to make breadcrumbs. Then, I had a few Roma tomatoes that needed to be used, and they went in. Then a good drizzle of olive oil. Then, I remembered I had some leftover roasted tomatoes and fennel in the fridge. In it went. Then, half an onion. And I pulverized it. Then mixed it with the 2 cups of rice and 1.25 lb of ground beef. The result was a DELICIOUS mixture. But definitely not stiff enough for meatballs. 

So, instead, I stuffed stuff. Tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. Carve out the center of the veggies, stuff, and cook at 350 until the meat is cooked through (peppers and tomatoes take longer than zucchini). 

Meatballs who? This was so much better!