Vegetable-Stuffed Peppers (Gogoshari)

Name: Vegetable-Stuffed Peppers (Gogoshari) - Vegetarian Recipe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Sweet peppers 4-6; Carrot 1; Parsnip root 1; Onions 2; Hot pepper 1; Garlic 2 cloves; Olive oil 50 ml (plus a little for brushing the peppers and the baking sheet); Salt, coriander, thyme, black pepper to taste; Ripe tomatoes 2-3; Sugar a little; Olive oil to taste; Balsamic vinegar a few drops; Garlic 1 clove; Dill, parsley to taste; Fresh bread to serve

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1 h 30 mins

Vegetable-stuffed peppers are a great alternative to the classic stuffed pepper, made especially for people who don’t eat meat. Once I heard a complaint that most vegetable recipes include meat, poultry, or fish. By and large, that’s true.

Various vegetable salads, of course, brighten up the picture. But a salad is just an appetizer meant to whet the appetite before the meal. As a main course, vegetarians should look at the different versions of stuffed vegetables. To my taste, the king of stuffed vegetables is imam bayildi, a baked eggplant stuffed with vegetables, which is sometimes made as a stew. I think you can also make meatless vegetable cabbage rolls. Or try this oven-baked ratatouille recipe — a truly unique vegetable dish.

Stuffed vegetables are usually very popular dishes in all the world’s cuisines, and they reflect local traditions. For stuffing, the inside of the vegetable is cleared of seeds and pulp, and the cavity is filled with a filling. Then, during cooking, the stuffed vegetables turn into a remarkable and even exotic dish. The taste of stuffed vegetables is somewhat like roasted vegetables, and it depends largely on the filling and on the sauce in which the dish is often stewed and which is customarily poured over the vegetables before serving.

The word “farsh” (stuffing) comes from the Latin farcio, meaning “to fill”. It is a mixture, often a complex one, of meat (poultry, fish), vegetables, mushrooms, grains, herbs, and so on. Usually the filling is seasoned with all the spices up front, so the vegetables that are stuffed turn out rather bland. It is always worth stewing the finished stuffed vegetables in a sauce or, alternatively, serving them with a sauce.

Vegetable-stuffed peppers are a fairly simple dish. The filling is made of vegetables fried in advance in olive oil. Then the peppers are baked in the oven until done and served with a tomato sauce with onions and spices.

During the pepper harvest, at the end of summer or in autumn, you often come across sweet peppers that look like small pumpkins. These peppers have a slightly ribbed surface and a flattened shape. Their colors range from green to bright red, and they can also be brown or mottled. This is a sweet pepper variety known as gogoshari (Rom. gogoșari), or sometimes ratunda. The taste is a little more bitter and rich (not hot) than that of ordinary bell peppers. These peppers are ideal for stuffing.

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Ingredients

2 servings

Peppers and filling
Sweet peppers 4-6
Carrot 1
Parsnip root 1
Onions 2
Hot pepper 1
Garlic 2 cloves
Olive oil 50 ml (plus a little for brushing the peppers and the baking sheet)
Salt, coriander, thyme, black pepper to taste
For the tomato sauce
Ripe tomatoes 2-3
Sugar a little
For the light sauce (instead of tomato)
Olive oil to taste
Balsamic vinegar a few drops
Garlic 1 clove
For serving
Dill, parsley to taste
Fresh bread to serve

Step-by-step recipe

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Preparing the peppers

Besides being delicious in vegetable salads, gogoshari peppers are ideal for stuffing. Their flattened shape keeps the stuffed pepper from tipping over during cooking, which, by the way, I personally like very much. I don’t like it when the filling floats around the pepper as it boils. It is better to choose small green or red peppers. Whether it’s gogoshari, ratunda, or just similar peppers doesn’t matter much. Peppers with vegetables will turn out great in any case, even if you cook chicken-stuffed peppers.
Remove the seeds from the peppers. Wash the peppers. With the tip of a thin knife, cut out the stem to make a small opening and shake out the seeds. Try not to damage the walls of the pepper, or it will simply fall apart in the end. Wipe the prepared peppers dry with napkins.
Bake the peppers in the oven until soft and lightly browned: brush them with a little olive oil and lay them on a baking sheet. I bake peppers at 210-220°C, checking visually for doneness, for about 30 minutes. Turn the peppers several times while baking so they cook evenly and don’t burn. The peppers lose some of their moisture, the walls become soft, and the surface wrinkles slightly.
Stuffed bell peppers are usually baked first to soften the fleshy fruit, so it’s best to do the same here.

Vegetable filling

For the stuffing in this recipe you can use almost any mixture of fried vegetables with low moisture content, as you like. The filling here is vegetables only, with no meat and no rice.
Prepare the vegetables while the peppers are baking. Peel and wash the carrot, parsnip root, and onions.
Cut the carrot and parsnip into cubes, about the size used for olivier salad or even a little smaller. Cut the onions into thin strips.
Fry the vegetables. Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan and fry the peeled garlic cloves, crushed with the flat of a knife. As soon as the garlic darkens, discard it.
In the flavored oil, fry the carrot and parsnip over medium heat. As soon as the root vegetables are soft, add the sliced onions, salt lightly, and fry until the onions are browned. Then add pepper and a pinch of ground coriander and thyme.
Add very finely chopped fresh hot pepper to taste, without seeds and white membranes. Fry all the vegetables for 2-3 minutes over medium heat. Then take the pan off the heat and let the vegetable filling cool.

Stuffing and baking

Stuff the baked peppers fairly tightly with the fried vegetables through the opening. By now the peppers will have cooled enough to hold. The leftover vegetables go into the sauce.
Place the stuffed peppers on a baking sheet greased with olive oil and put them in an oven preheated to 180°C for 20-25 minutes, until the filling is heated through.

Sauce

While the stuffed peppers finish cooking, prepare the sauce. By and large, a light sauce is enough for this dish: olive oil mixed with a few drops of balsamic vinegar and a very finely chopped garlic clove. Pour the sauce over the stuffed peppers arranged on a plate. But for stuffed peppers I prefer a sweet-and-sour tomato sauce.
Make the tomato sauce. Fry the vegetables left over from the filling for a few more minutes. Scald the fresh ripe tomatoes with boiling water, remove the seeds and skin, and puree the flesh with a blender. Add the tomato puree to the fried vegetables, season with salt and pepper, and add a little sugar. Simmer the tomato sauce over low heat, covered, for 15 minutes.

Serving

Put the finished peppers on plates and pour the tomato sauce with onions over them. Or, alternatively, pour the sauce into a rimmed plate and set the finished vegetable-stuffed peppers in the sauce.
Sprinkle the peppers with chopped herbs and garnish with sprigs of dill and parsley.
Serve hot with fresh bread. If you like it spicy, I recommend adding 1-2 pods of peppers in oil and garlic cloves fried in their skins.

Calories and macros

440 kcal

Serving ≈ 730 g

Protein8 g7% of kcal
Fat25 g54% of kcal
Carbs39 g38% of kcal

100 g60 kcalProtein 1 gFat 3.4 gCarbs 5.4 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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