No meat Monday! Bean stuffed peppers and Mexican rice

Serves 3

One of the things we've been trying to do is to eat less meat; both for the environmental and health reasons.

Few people know that the Mexican diet was almost completely vegetarian before the arrival of the Spanish. The main reason being that in the area that is now Mexico there were no large animals like cattle, pigs or even horses.   The biggest animal that the locals ate was the turkey....in Mexican Spanish, the guajolote.

They say that when Hernán Cortes arrived in Tenochitlan -what is now Mexico City- he was invited to a banquet with emperor Moctezuma in which more than 300 dishes were served. The majority of these dishes were vegetarian.  This pre-Hispanic influence remains to this day, so there are a great number of vegetarian Mexican dishes to choose from.

So for my vegetarian and non-vegetarian friends here is the recipe:

Peppers                                       6

Refried beans                              2 cans

          (you can get them at some supermarkets, and are usually
          in the pasta aisle. If there are no refried beans
          available buy the normal tinned "Mexe" Beans and
          liquidise them after seasoning, to form a paste)

Onion                                          ¼ diced

Garlic                                          2 cloves

Sour cream                                  4 tablespoons

Tussers cheese                             a handful grated

Rice                                            1 cup

Baby corn                                    6 pieces (fresh or canned)

Vegetable broth                           3 cups

Olive oil                                      2 table spoons

Preheat your oven to 180º C

First you will have to “pimp up” the beans as when they come from the can they are usually just boiled and the flavour tends to be a little bit bland.  Heat up a pan and add one tablespoon of olive oil. Once it’s hot, add the onion and one of the cloves of garlic , chopped.  When the onion is almost transparent, add the two cans of beans and a squirt of water.  Let it boil for a few minutes and set aside.

  

Cut off the top of the peppers and clean the insides of any seeds. Spoon in some of the refried beans, then top with the cheese and sour cream.  Add about 1 cup of water to the bottom of the pan (this will cook the peppers, and prevent them form losing their form and spilling their contents).  Let them cook for about 20 min or until they have changed colour form bright green to olive green.  Grill for 5 more minutes.

For the rice, in a hot pan add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and let 1 clove of garlic blacken.  Add the cup of rice and fry it until it’s transparent and sounds like sand (remember my abuela?)  Add the baby corn and the 3 cups of broth and let the water evaporate.  Now here’s the secret; you don’t stir the rice.  Why? Well, if you do you release the starch and it gets all sticky and mushy.... not good! Mexican rice is not supposed to be sticky, believe me. So every now and then check if you can see the bottom of the pan through the rice. If you can, and the rice is still a bit hard, add 1 more cup of water.

And that’s it! Easy huh? Buen provecho (Bon Appétit in Spanish)

Love LOLA