Vegetables stuffed with sausage
( Verdure ripiene con salsiccia )

Recipe for vegetables stuffed with sausage

Preparation

• - Soak stale bread in water.
• - Prepare vegetables.
  Halve bell peppers trying to keep their stem.
  Remove their seeds.
  Wash them under running water.
  Pat dry with absorbent kitchen paper.
  Wash tomatoes under running water.
  Cut their top cap.
  Remove their inner pulp with a spoon.
  Turn upside down and let them drain while preparing your stuffing.
• - Prepare stuffing.
  Squeeze bread from soaking water very well.
  Transfer onto a little bowl.
  Crumble sausage after removing its skin in the same bowl.
  Beaten egg and add to other ingredients.
  Clean and wash parsley and chives.
  Pat dry with absorbent kitchen paper.
  Chop with your hands or a ceramic knife to avoid their oxidation.
  Add dried breadcrumbs too.
  Season to taste with salt and pepper, if liked.
  Stir very well.
  I mix my stuffing using my hands too so I understand better its consistency. It should not be hard but very soft.
• - Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
• - Fill your vegetables.
  Salt the inside of bell peppers and tomatoes
  Spoon stuffing.
• - Prepare the baking pan.
  Line a baking pan with aluminum.
  Emulsify olive oil with a tablespoon of water.
  Brush your emulsion on aluminum.
  Transfer your vegetables onto the baking pan.

Cooking

• - Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes or until your vegetables are slightly withered and their stuffing golden.

Just before serving

• - Transfer your stuffed vegetables into a serving platter.
• - Wait some minutes before serving.

note

Tips

• - You can eat my stuffed vegetables both cold or warm according to your taste.
• - I can not be more precise about cooking times for vegetables.
  Much depends on the size and fullness of bell peppers and tomatoes.
  You may need to remove bell peppers from the oven before and continue cooking tomatoes.
• - This stuffing is enough to fill 7 little bell peppers and 4 medium-size tomatoes.
• - You can fill zucchini with the same stuffing.
  But your zucchini should be small, tender and well excavated with this method of cooking.
• -Prepare your stuffed vegetables some hours ahead, even the day before.

Menu planning

• - As I've just written my stuffed vegetables are versatile. You can serve them in many ways.
  Picnic even at the seaside.
  Meal, buffet-style.
  Seated lunch or dinner party in summer. In this case you can serve them as Italian antipasto combined with other recipes. Read our pages dedicated to Italian antipasto and finger food to look for other ideas.
• - I never serve them as side dish in my family menu. It's enough to read their nutrtion facts to understand why.

Healthy eating

• - Vegetables themselves are not hypercaloric. But they may become depending on how we cook them.
  It's the case of stuffed vegetables when their filling contains meat or cold cuts.
  Surely they are much healthier when we simply fill them with rice, couscous or other grains.
  But if meat filling is done from time to time for our special occasions it isn't a great problem.
  Provided special occasions are not very frequent ;)
• - Fiber per serving: 4.5 grams (daily intake is 23 grams)

Loretta