Traditional Greek Stuffed Vegetables

Stuffed vegetables is a dish present in many different cuisines of Eurasia cultures (from Armenia to Spain). The Greek version of this dish usually consist of vegetables and a filling of rice (many call them "orphans") or a mixture of the rice and meat (code-named "married").

Time to prepare: 3 hours
Difficulty: Advanced
Utensils: Cutting knife, food processor, saucepan, carving spoon, large baking pan
Adaptable: Yes
Vegetarian: Yes
Vegan: Yes
Dish origin: Greek
Servings: 6

Ingredients:

📝 Veggies to be stuffed may vary depending on what you have available, feel free to add more peppers and less tomatoes, or even carve some eggplant or zucchini to be stuffed. Make sure your cooking pan is small enough keep all the veggies standing up, for the filling not to drop out. If your pan is bigger than what needed feel free to chop some more potatoes to add them between the stuffed veggies, just make sure to add a little bit more liquid medium on the interface of the veggies for the potatoes to be properly cooked.

Preparation:

1. Wash all the vegetables and place them in a pan to make sure they fit. They must not be too crowded so that we can put the potatoes in the gaps.

2. Cut the cap off the green peppers and remove the white inside under the cap. Discard the seeds and keep the cap. Also, cut the caps off the tomatoes and delicately remove/carve their insides with a spoon, which we put in a separate bowl.

3. With a fork, prick the vegetables at the bottom in 4 places (optional for filling drainage).

4. Sprinkle the inside of each vegetable with 1/2 tbsp. sugar, salt and pepper.

5. Put the insides of the green peppers (optional), the insides of the tomatoes, the whole clove of garlic, the mint (or basil) and the parsley (or dill) in the food processor and grind them to make the filling sauce.

6. In a large pan, heat the 4 tbsp. olive oil over high heat and saute the onions and the chopped garlic clove for 2-3 minutes.

7. Add the rice and the tomato paste to the pan, saute for 1 more minute and extinguish with half the sauce and the vegetable stock. Cook for another 4-5 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed and take the pan off the heat.
   

8. Add 2-3 tbsp of salt & pepper and 1/2 cup of olive oil to the mixture and mix well. Adjust the taste, if necessary, with salt and pepper (at this point the rice should be quite salty).

9. Fill all the vegetables with the filling up to 3/4 of volume.

10. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius on air.

11. Clean the potatoes and cut them into wedges. Season them with salt and pepper and squeeze them between the vegetables.

12. Sprinkle the stuffed with 1/3 cup of olive oil and close the vegetables with their carved caps.

13. Pour the rest of the sauce with 1/2 cup of water into the pan and sprinkle the breadcrumbs all over.

14. Optional, in the case your oven is small and you fear the caps will get burned or if you don't want to check mid-baking to add liquids in the cooking pan: first cover the cooking pan with veggies with a piece of parchment paper and then seal very well with aluminum foil.

15. Bake for 1 hour, uncover or check for the liquids, and leave for another 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on your oven.

📝 There should be some liquid left in the pan and the vegetables and potatoes should have started to dry out.

This recipe was expropriated fromVakiarosCooking Blog