stuffed bell peppers

yes, i know it's been awhile.  i wish i could say it's because i've been travelling around the world for the past 2 months.  but no, i've been here in dc with our record setting summer temps.  the garden doesn't seem to have suffered much from it.  aside from some occasional watering, it still is producing enough that it's hard to keep up.  so far i've canned about 7 quarts plus 10 pints of whole tomatoes, and 3 quarts and 4 pints of tomato sauce.  

the bell peppers have started to ripen nicely the past week or so.  faced with an abundance, an easy fix is to prepare stuffed peppers.  i really like them because once prepared, they freeze easily; and you can pretty much fill them up with any number of combinations.  i usually start with a base of brown rice as the main filler.  then i add some other sauteed veggies, such as onions or squash.  i also had some vegetarian sausage in the freezer that i had made a while ago, so i chopped that up and added it to the mix.  it's a little time consuming but makes a lot which can be frozen easily.  then i add fresh herbs and some kind of cheese.  in this case, i had some ricotta that needed to be used.  i steamed the peppers for a few minutes first, cook all the goods for the stuffing, mix them all together, and then stuff the peppers.

i like to stack them in mini loaf pans.  usually 2 peppers fit perfectly and it helps to keep them upright.  you can them bake them for 15 minutes at 350.  if you freeze them, defrost them in the freezer the night before, then bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.  since all the ingredients are already cooked you just want it to fully heat through and lightly brown on the top.

it's always a bit of a guessing game as to how much stuffing you need.  in this case, here's what i used for the 6 peppers:
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/2 large onion
1 hot pepper
3 cloves garlic
1 pint of slow roasted cherry tomatoes
1/4 - 1/3 cup ricotta
chopped oregano and basil
grated parmesan

the roasted tomatoes lend a deliciously sweet flavor.  i was roasting some of my large ones, so i went ahead and roasted the cherries too.  it's super easy, but requires a lot of time.  heat oven to 275 degrees.  in a roasting pan, add halved tomatoes (cut side up - except for the cherries, i just cut a slit in them rather than cutting all the way in half).  drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.  bake for about 3 hours (the cherries took about 2 hours).  after about 2.5 hours, i turned the tomatoes over to let the juices run out more.  then the last 5 minutes i turned on the broiler to get a nice brown on the skin.  they are so intensely flavored.  would be a great addition to pizza or a regular tomato pasta sauce.