I am the kind of person that does not enjoy plain, raw vegetables. Jeff is the kind of guy that can just go to town on a vegetable plate and completely ignore the dip; it’s infuriating. I want to eat more vegetables but smothering them with dip seems counter productive. Thus, I went looking for a stuffed pepper recipe. I was keen to find one with chicken rather than beef because I try to not go too nuts with the red meat.
The recipe
Dila’s Chicken-Stuffed Peppers from allrecipes.com.
Ingredient changes
I was making these as a side rather than a main dish so I halved the recipe and made only two. Also, as I was chopping the cilantro, I felt like the whole bunch was a lot so I used only half.
Ease (or not) of prep
This recipe was pretty straightforward – cook chicken, chop stuff, grate cheese. I’d say it took about 25 minutes to put together, so I suppose I can’t really complain (oh no, what do I do now?).
The Boyfriend Test: Pass
Jeff said he really liked his. He scooped all the filling out and then ate the pepper like an apple, which amused me as I, a huge prude apparently, carefully used my fork and knife to cut slices out of mine.
Picky Eater Test: Soft fail
I plan to make these again with a couple big differences so, while I enjoyed the stuffed pepper idea, I did not like this recipe at all. My main issue was the cilantro. I was right to cut half of it out because it still overpowered the flavour. I don’t use a lot of fresh herbs when cooking so the smell of cilantro really surprised me as I chopped it. I found it smelled like soap, almost chemical, and I was immediately turned off. I figured it would change a bit in the dish but I was wrong. I ate as much as I could while trying to pick around the cilantro but I gave about half of mine to Jeff. I was really disappointed; I so wanted to enjoy this. Next time I make it, I will use spinach instead. That may also solve the second problem I had, which was that the recipe did not yield enough filling. I’m guessing this has something to do with using half the cilantro but I’m surprised it made that much of a difference.
I’m going to look around at other stuffed pepper recipes and see what looks good. I can easily replace beef with chicken so I’ll likely try that before I get too experimental with my cooking. I’m not that fancy just yet.
The Curmudgeonly Cook 