Food Bite: Quinoa, Tuna and Tomato Stuffed Peppers

I cooked dinner for my flatmate and one of my girlfriends tonight. I adore cooking, but I never bother to cook anything extravagent or even that interesting when I’m just cooking for one. When I visit my parents, I always get to cook lavish dishes and I occasionally ‘cater’ dinner parties or lunch parties for my Grandma, but for the most part, I don’t get to cook that much. And it saddens me!

But we decided to have Emma round for dinner and I had a recipe already in mind that I wanted to play with; Roasted red peppers stuffed with a tomato, quinoa, tuna and mozarella filling. Never tried it before, but I thought I’d give it a shot!

My recipe to serve 4:

4 large red peppers
375g Chestnut mushrooms
2 tins tuna flakes (or 250g approx)
375g broccoli cut into small florets
120g Quinoa
1 tin chopped tomatoes (400-600g according to preference!)
125g Mozzarella
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 large Jalapeno Peppers, sliced (If you like spicy!)
Salt and pepper

• Cut each of the peppers in half and cut out seeds and white flesh. Place each pepper (in two halves) on a large sheet of tinfoil, allowing enough foil to be able to fold over and completely cover the peppers.
• Add the garlic and tomatoes to a pan and cook gently for 2 mintes. Add the quinoa and 350ml wate to the pan. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 10 minutes.
• Add the mushrooms, broccoli, jalapenos and tuna to the pan and simmer for another 10 minutes until quinoa is tender and water is absorbed.
• Stir in salt and pepper to taste and remove from heat.
• Use a spoon to fill the pepper halves with the stuffing mixture, compact into the peppers tightly and pile as high as you wish!
• Place any remaining filling around the peppers in the tin foil ‘cases’ and add a little extra water to stop it sticking to the foil.
• Cover the peppers with foil and place in a preheated (200c) oven for 45 minutes to an hour.
• Slice the mozzarella. remove peppers from over, remove foil covering and lay slices of mozzarella on top of the peppers.
• Return to oven for 15-25 minutes.
• Serve with a fresh rocket and tomato salad!

Really enjoyed the finished result; it was an experiment and it really worked! So that’s a turn out for the books…

The other great thing about this recipe is that its super healthy! A portion of two halves (like the pic)  works out at under 400 calories!

Quinoa is also a great superfood: packed with protein so it’s great for vegetarians and you can really mix and match with the ingredients: chicken instead of tuna, or just add different varieties of muchrooms or veg to the stuffing!

Great versatile meal and so quick and easy to make; the most time spent was when it was in the oven, leaving me free to be a sociable host!!!

I think that the culture of cooking fresh, homemade food and sitting down with friends to really enjoy a meal has been lost somewhat. There’s no better way to spend an evening, in my opinion, than preparing a delicious meal, having a few close friends around and enjoying good food, a bottle of wine and some great conversation. And of course, no meal is complete without pudding…!