BBC: Bacon, Bean & Cabbage (Soup)

I'm behind here - this was something I cooked in the fall (which I'd say is a much more appropriate season for this dish). Once again with heavy inspiration from James Villas I went for a soup combining some of my favourite ingredients: bacon, beans and cabbage..

I'll trust him on his claim that this is a Serbian soup. The original recipe calls for green cabbage, but I went for red cabbage - more on this in a bit.

Ingredients:
- 250 g (~ ¹/₂ lb) bacon^[1]
- 2 yellow onions, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 medium large head of red cabbage, chopped
- 2 L (~ ¹/₂ gallon) beef broth
- 3 cans cannellini beans (drained)
- flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped

The bacon was fried in a large pot until a good amount of fat had been rendered out of it, then removed from the pot. The onions and garlic were rendered soft in the bacon fat before adding the cabbage together with beef broth, beans, bacon and parsley. The pot was brought to a boil and allowed to simmer for 45 minutes before serving.

I found the soup delicious, but I have to admit the red cabbage gave the soup a special colour. A colour I personally have no problem with but which I can see why some people might not like. So I guess going for white cabbage or maybe even kale would be a good idea.<sup>[2]

[1]</sup> I used thinly sliced bacon, which I think was a mistake - I think this recipe would work better with diced bacon.
^[2] I'm not sure Villas means kale when he writes 'green cabbage' (which is what think of when I use that term). I think maybe he means what I'd call white cabbage - but there's no picture for this dish in his book, so I am not sure.

Serbian Stuffed Peppers (2)

As I believe I have mentioned around here recently, I suddenly find myself with better options for shopping chillies after I moved. When I saw the nice big bags of dried Anaheim and New Mexico chillies I remembered I had been told that Serbian stuffed peppers could be made using dried peppers. This excited me as I have had a hard time finding suitably hot, large chillies here in Sweden, so I decided to give it a go.

For the stuffing, I followed the old recipe (except for using a mixture of ground beef and pork). For the peppers I took a total of 12 dried Anaheim and New Mexico chillies, and let them soak in hot water for 20-30 minutes before de-seeding them. In hindsight I think it might have been easier to remove the veins before soaking them, but it wasn't too bad.

Unfortunately the chillies weren't as large as I had expected them to be after soaking. This meant that they were rather tedious to stuff, and that most of the 'stuffing' had to go in the tray not inside any peppers. For the water, I used the same water as I had soaked the chillies in (in order to add more flavour to the dish).

The chillies used had a very nice flavour - but I was quite disappointed regarding their hotness. Not nearly hot enough.

Serbian Stuffed Peppers

Recently I had my Serbian friend come over and show me how to make one of his favorite meals from home: Stuffed peppers. I couldn't find the authentic peppers for it, but he told me any sort of longish peppers, not too hot, should work. I decided to try out using both poblano and anaheim peppers.

Anaheim peppers

Ingredients:
- oil
- 1 large onion
- 500 g (1 lb) ground beef
- salt & pepper
- 3 dL (1 1/3 cup) parboiled rice
- 4 poblano chilies
- 4 anaheim chilies
- 1 roma tomato
- water
- plain yogurt (to serve)

Stuffing the peppers

The finely chopped onion was sautéed in a little oil in a large pan. When the onion pieces were golden, the meat was added together with generous amounts of salt and pepper. When the ground beef was browned the rice were added and the contents of the pan were mixed well, before being allowed to stand while preparing the peppers.

All the peppers were rinsed, the stem was cut out (leaving as much wall as possible) and most of the seeds were rinsed out of them. The meat/onion/rice mixture was stuffed into the peppers using a spoon and a knife, making sure they were stuffed quite densely and each pepper was closed with a slice of roma tomato. The peppers were put in a oven proof tray and the rest of the meat/onion/rice mixture was added around them. Then water was added, so as to just cover the peppers. Covered with foil, the tray went in the oven at 200-225 C (400-450 F) for about 45 minutes, after which the foil was removed allowing the excess water to boil off during the last minutes of cooking.

Serve with plain yogurt.

The poblano peppers were notably hotter than the anaheim peppers and my Serbian friend concluded they were a very good substitute for the pepper he would have used at home. He also said it's possible to use dried peppers, they just need to soak in hot water prior to being stuffed.

Update: Using dried peppers.