Home Style Lebanese Stuffed Peppers

Erma, only you would take a classic Mennonite Comfort Food like a Buttermilk Pie and add booze. Sometimes I think that you must have stock in a distillery, or get a kickback from the bourbon makers for promotion of their product. Well, see if you can add bourbon to this Comfort Food.

Almost every Eastern European country and much of the Middle East have their own versions of that old standby Stuffed Green Peppers. A Lebanese neighbor years ago shared with me what she called her favorite “real” Lebanonese recipe. My Polish grandmother’s Stuffed Green Peppers is almost identical. She used ground beef instead of lamb and brown sugar in place of the mint, cinnamon and cumin.

Isn’t it funny how the only difference between a Polish classic and an Lebanonese classic is the different herbs?

Home Style Lebanonese Stuffed Peppers:

6 large green peppers
1 ½ cups rice
1 pound ground lamb
1 (6 ounce ) cans tomato paste
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon dried mint
Salt and pepper
Cinnamon and cumin to taste
Water

Cut off the tops of the peppers and hollow out. Combine the rice, lamb, one can of tomato paste and the seasonings. Stuff each pepper about 3/4’s full. Place the peppers into a dutch over sized pot. Mix the remaining can of tomato sauce and tomato paste with enough water to cover the peppers. Bring to a full boil.cover the pot, and simmer on low for one to one and a half hours. When serving, pour the juice over the peppers. I like to cook the tomato sauce down to a gravy thickness.

Mrs. Chalfin’s Stuffed Cucumbers

Erma, you served some of your Blackberry Champagne once when we were visiting, and it was pretty good, but your Pear Champagne was out of this world. Until then I did not know that the old name for this was Perry. I had read about Perry as a drink in old history books and cookbooks, but I hadn’t realized what it was.

I must save your Blackberry Wine recipe in case the world comes crashing down and we have to survive off what we can grow in our own gardens. It is comforting to know that a complete breakdown of society does not mean that we can not have wine with our meals.

You are coping with an excess of blackberries, and I am coping with an excess of cucumbers. While there are hundreds of pickle recipes (I know as I have probably tried most of them at one time or another), there is a limit as to how many pickles one family can eat in a year.

You talking about your recent visit to Monticello inspired me to dig out my 1950 edition of the “Monticello Cook Book.” Reading along, I came upon this Stuffed Cucumbers recipe. I don’t know who Mrs. Chalfin was, but she had an interesting take on cucumbers. People used to eat their cucumbers much bigger (and tougher and bitterer) than we do today. This baking and stuffing would cover over the bitter taste of a large cucumber. I am sure her “medium cucumbers” would be classed as large today.

What I found interesting is her inclusion of fresh thyme, chives, parsley, celery seed, and sage. Not many recipes of that era included herbs. As I recall, Jefferson’s gardens were filled with herbs so he must have had his French trained cook use them generously.

Mrs. Chalfin’s Stuffed Cucumbers:

8 medium cucumbers
1 green pepper, chopped
½ pound pork sausage
2 ½ cups soft bread crumbs
Salt, peppers, celery seed to taste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves plus a pinch of sage, unless sausage is already highly seasoned

Wipe and peel cucumbers. Cut in half lengthwise. Remove seeds and chop and drain them. Cook sausage and peppers until slightly brown. Add to the cucumber pulp without the grease. Use 2 tablespoons of this fat to make a gravy with flour and ½ cup of milk. Add to the other ingredients with the bread, seasonings and herbs. Fill cucumber shells, sprinkle with chopped chives or parsley and top with melted butter. Bake at 375 degrees F. for about ½ hour or until tops are brown and cucumbers are done.

Note: Eggplant and Summer Squash are both good done this way.