Next, Pour some extra virgin olive oil in a pan, probably about 1/4 cup. I used a pan that's halfway between a skillet and a saucepan. It's shallow and wide, but it has straight sides like a saucepan.You could probably just use a big pot, but make sure it isn't too thin, so the risotto won't burn.
Heat the oil on medium-high heat, and saute about 2 tbsp minced garlic, along with parsley, rosemary, oregano, basil, and thyme, and just a pinch of crushed red pepper. I didn't measure the herbs, so just use your best judgement. These were all dried, except for the garlic, which we have a jar of minced garlic in the fridge. Saute this for about 1-2 minutes, until the garlic starts to brown a bit, and then add 1 cup arborio rice.
Stir the rice around, and let each grain get coated in the oil. Keep sauteing it until the rice starts to smell a bit nutty. This can be a bit hard, with all the herbs, but trust me, you will notice a difference in smell. Once it smells nutty, add about 2/3 cup of a semisweet white wine. Reduce heat to medium, and let this simmer until it no longer smells strongly of alcohol.
Next, start adding broth, a ladle-full at a time. Add 1 ladle of broth, stir and simmer, until there is very little liquid left. Then add another ladle. Keep doing this, and stirring constantly, until the rice is al dente. It will take about 40 minutes. If you run out of broth, then add hot water. (I didn't run out of broth, but the risotto recipe I was using as a guideline had that suggestion.) Add salt and pepper to taste. It won't need much, because of the broth, but I did add a sprinkle of salt. Once it is al dente, remove the risotto from heat, and let it cool.
Now, Open a can of chickpeas, and drain and rinse them.
Prepare the peppers by cutting the tops off, and removing the seeds and as much of the white stuff as you can without breaking the peppers. This recipe should fill 4 red bell peppers.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mix about 1/2 the can of chickpeas in with the risotto and stuff that into the peppers. Top each pepper with bread crumbs. Bake for about 40 minutes in the oven, then remove and eat.
If you don't want to do this all at once, you could double the risotto recipe, and have that for dinner one night, and then use the leftovers to stuff peppers the next night.
Also, if you don't have a trader joe's near you, or you like some other broth better, feel free to use something else. If you have veggie bouillon cubes, I'd do the same ratio I did with the broth concentrate, so 3 cubes into 4 cups water. If you have a carton of broth, you can just use it straight. I've had good luck with mushroom broth in risotto in the past, so maybe try that. If you use a tomato-based broth, the flavor will be quite different, but I would imagine it would be very tasty.
ReplyDeleteIf only I had things like cans of chickpeas and savory veggie broth..... or even bouillon cubes... Though, I did learn how to make something similar using rice and hamburger in Georgia... guess you could always substitute tofu for hamburger or something...
ReplyDeleteWell, Jo, you aren't a vegetarian, so you could just use whatever kind of broth you want. Also, I bet it would taste good with any kind of beans in it, or just leave them out entirely. Chris actually made his with some ground beef mixture in with the risotto, because he doesn't like chickpeas. I think he basically just mixed up some ground beef like he would for meatballs, and then mixed that into the risotto, stuffed it, and baked it.
DeleteI'm not really vegetarian, but I've been trying harder lately to eat less meat. We haven't bought meat for the house in months and whenever I eat by myself I don't get meat either... so basically I only eat meat when I go out with friends... because Korea is not a very vegetarian friendly country and if I made people eat vegetarian there wouldn't be very many options...
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