Tag: garlic powder

Categories
Appetizer Side Dish

Sweet peppers are the stuff of dreams

Stuffed sweet peppers are a showstopper appetizer that are extremely simple to prepare and can be served warm or cold.
Stuffed sweet peppers are a showstopper appetizer that are extremely simple to prepare and can be served warm or cold.

Joey and I tied the knot back in 2010, which meant our 10-year anniversary was pretty anticlimactic last summer with COVID in our backyard. 

No date night out on the town. No restaurant dinner.

We still enjoyed one another’s company (I mean, it’s not like we could be apart while quarantined in the same house.), but when our anniversary hit this summer, we decided we should have a night out for number 11.

We ended up going to Lola’s Bistro in Wichita, a favorite spot of Wichita food blogger “Wichita by E.B.” (Check out his site, if you never have. He does a great job and has visited a lot of mom and pop spots all over the state. It’s at wichitabyeb.com.)

The meal was fantastic, and one of the items we liked quite a bit was a palate starter our waiter brought out before our appetizer. They were bite-sized, delicious stuffed sweet peppers, and we decided the next time we needed an appetizer for a group, we were going to try to recreate the recipe.

The recipe I decided to try did not disappoint. It comes from the blog “From Which Things Grow.” You can find the original post at http://fromwhichthingsgrow.blogspot.com/2012/01/chew-on-this-stuffed-mini-sweet-peppers.html. I added extra garlic powder in my version.

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Stuffed Sweet Peppers

Stuffed sweet peppers are a showstopper appetizer that are extremely simple to prepare and can be served warm or cold.
Course Appetizer
Keyword bacon, cream cheese, garlic powder, seasoning salt, sharp cheddar cheese, sweet peppers

Ingredients

  • about 2 pounds mini sweet peppers
  • 8 ounces cream cheese softened
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon seasoning salt
  • 1 1/2 cups sharp cheddar cheese shredded
  • 5-6 strips bacon cooked and crumbled

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a muffin tin by spraying each well lightly with cooking spray.
  • Wash the peppers, and then cut off the tops. Scoop out the seeds and ribs to hollow them out.
  • Mix the rest of the ingredients together and fill each pepper with as much of the filling as you can (it’s OK if they’re overflowing just a bit).
  • Stand the peppers up, filling side up, in the wells of the muffin tin. The peppers can share wells to help them stand up. Crowding isn’t a problem.
  • Bake for 20 minutes, and then serve warm, or refrigerate them and serve them cold later on.

These were absolutely delicious. Our local grocery store didn’t have itty bitty sweet peppers like we tried at the restaurant, so these were more like two-bite appetizers, but they were fabulous. 

Personally, I like them better warmed up than cold, but they were good both ways, and they actually reheat out of the refrigerator pretty well, if you end up with leftovers.

I also had extra filling when I was done. It would be delicious on crackers, and I even tried it inside a quesadilla, which was pretty darn good.

I’m certainly not trying to claim that my cooking is anywhere near the quality of a fine dining restaurant, but if I can brag just a bit, I do think these stuffed peppers turned out extremely well.

Hopefully, when our 20th anniversary rolls around, Joey and I will be able to celebrate with someone else doing the cooking. But if the next decade repeats the last, at least I know what we can have for our first course.

This piece first appeared in print on Thursday, Aug. 12.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Side Dish

Just ‘fry’ to resist these scrumptious potatoes

Italian fried potatoes are a relatively simple recipe with lots of flavor.
Italian fried potatoes are a relatively simple recipe with lots of flavor.

When I was younger, I knew it was going to be a great supper if I saw my mom’s electric skillet sitting out on the counter.

That meant we were having fried potatoes as our side dish for dinner. I can still smell them cooking when I think about that skillet. It was one of my favorite things.

Mom would cut Russet potatoes into about quarter-inch rounds and add them with oil, garlic salt and pepper into the electric skillet.

They always came out creamy and delicious—especially if you got one of the crispy potatoes that was just a bit thinner than the others.

Now I’m making myself hungry.

Well, in the spirit of my Mom’s tried and true potato recipe, I decided to try one that’s extremely similar but adds Italian frying potatoes (or whatever long, mild green pepper you can find) into the mix. I wouldn’t recommend bell peppers for this, but if that’s all you can find, go for it.

I found this recipe on a blog with a fantastic name, “Panning the Globe.” You can find the post at www.panningtheglobe.com/2016/11/02/italian-fried-potatoes-peppers/. I added more seasoning to my version.

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Italian Fried Potatoes and Peppers

Italian fried potatoes are a relatively simple recipe with lots of flavor.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine Italian
Keyword garlic powder, onion powder, peppers, potatoes

Ingredients

  • about 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 5 large Russet potatoes
  • 4 long mild green peppers (I used Anaheim)
  • 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder or to taste
  • 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon onion powder or to taste
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  • Slice your potatoes into rounds as thinly as possible or no bigger than one-quarter inch. If you have a mandolin slicer, this would be a good time to pull it out. Slice the peppers into one-by-one-inch strips and remove the seeds.
  • Heat the oil in a large skillet with a lid over medium-high heat. (It may feel like a lot of oil in the pan, but the potatoes will soak it up as they cook. You’ll want somewhere around 1/4-inch of oil in the bottom, but if you want to use less and just keep an eye on it, go for it.)
  • Once the oil is hot but not smoking, add the potatoes and seasoning into the pan and stir to coat the potatoes.
  • Don’t stir them again for another three to five minutes—letting the bottom get nice and browned with the lid on the pan.
  • Add the peppers into the pan, and flip the pan’s contents so the browned potatoes end up on top.
  • Put the lid back on and let things set for another three to five minutes. Repeat that process until your potatoes are all either crispy or nice and fork tender.
  • Add more seasoning to taste.

I didn’t peel my potatoes for this, but if you’re not really into potato skins, you’ll probably want to. They’ll mostly separate from the potatoes into long strips in the mix.

These potatoes also reheated really well, which was good, because it made tons and tons of food. It certainly wasn’t my healthiest week of lunches to take to work, but I tried to rationalize the fact that I was also taking meatless lunches made it better somehow.

You might want to decrease the number of potatoes and peppers if you’re not planning on feeding a small army, though.

The only disappointing part of this recipe is that this was definitely not as good as my mom’s. I may have to sweet talk her into firing up that electric skillet again sometime soon.

This piece first appeared in print on March 8, 2018.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

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