Turkey, Feta, and Cous Cous Stuffed Peppers: Halloween fun

Turkey, Feta, and Cous Cous Stuffed Peppers

Turkey, Feta, and Cous Cous Stuffed Peppers

Halloween party food can be full of food colouring and artificial flavourings, which I try and avoid as much as I can when cooking for myself. When looking up Halloween food recipes it was difficult to find something that would appeal to children as well as adults, as well as being filling and fun!

Turkey, feta, and cous cous stuffed peppers

This idea came from Google images of similar creations posted by people and is a great way of creating the Halloween look with little effort. It can also be adapted to suit any dietary requirements, I chose to use Turkey mince, feta cheese and cous cous. I found these huge peppers that were perfect for making the ‘pumpkins’ as I was worried they would shrink quite a lot upon baking.

I also made the ‘pumpkins’ with friendly faces so my 3 year old nephew would not be too scared to eat his dinner! 🙂

Turkey, Feta and Cous Cous

Ingredients:

• 6 Large yellow bell peppers
• 500 g Turkey Mince
• 200 g Feta cheese
• 2 tbs Tomato puree
• 250 ml Passata
• 1 Courgette (diced)
• 1 Medium onion (diced)
• 2 Cloves garlic  (crushed)
• 150 g Chestnut mushrooms (diced)
• 100 g cous cous, prepared as advised on packaging
• 2 tbs vegetable oil
• salt and pepper

Method:

• In a frying pan, fry the onions and garlic in the oil until lightly browned then add the turkey mince and stir fry until half cooked
• Add the courgettes, mushrooms and tomato puree stir frying until evenly combined
• Add the passata and salt and pepper to taste, allow to simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes. Take off the heat and allow to cool before adding the prepared cous cous and crumbled feta, carefully mixing in so that the feta stays in large chunks
• In the mean time carefully cut off the top of the pepper so the stalk remains intact with the ‘lid’ and remove the core and seeds
• Carve the faces into the peppers, you’ll probably be better at this than me so be creative! 😀
• Line up all the peppers in a deep casserole dish and fill each ‘pepper pumpkin’ with the turkey, feta and cous cous stuffing. Replace the top of the pepper to complete the ‘pumpkin’ look
• Bake the pumpkins at 180 degree C for 30-40 minutes until the peppers are cooked through. The filling is cooked so only needs to be warmed through

 

 

 

Turkey, feta, and cous cous stuffed poppers

Goats cheese, Caramelized onion, Spinach, Sun-dried tomato, and Pine nut tart

Caramelized onion, Goats cheese, Spinach, Sun dried tomato, and pine nut tart

I often start cooking and get a little carried away with the different flavour combinations. This tart is one of many examples of such cooking exploits. This started off as a goats cheese and caramelised onion tart but then I also wanted a feta and spinach tart. The end result is a layered Caramelized onion, Goats cheese, Spinach, Sun dried tomato, and pine nut tart.

Caramelized onion, Goats cheese, Spinach and Sun dried tomato tart

  I didn’t actually follow a recipe, so don’t have one to share! Here’s the basic steps I took: 1) make caramelized onions 2) make bechamel sauce and add some frozen spinach 3) part bake pastry case 4) layer on the onions, then the spinach bechamel sauce 5) crumble over the goats cheese then chopped up sun-dried tomatoes 6) half way through baking add pine nuts and freshly ground black pepper I used shop bought short crust pastry (it is mid-week after all!) but sprinkled on cumin seeds and rolled them into the dough before pressing the pastry into the tin. The end result was a lovely crisp, fragrant, pastry edged tart. However all the moisture from the filling meant the base remained wet. Anyone who is a massive fan of baking (like me) will know of Mary Berry, she’s more recently better known for being a judge on ‘The Great British Bake Off’. Whenever I bake now, I always wonder what Mary would think of it. On this occasion she would say ‘good flavour combination, just a shame about the soggy bottom!’ Sorry Mary! Lesson learned: cumin seeds in pastry is delicious! Second lesson learned: self restraint, every so often, is worth observing…

Related articles

• Red Onion and Goats Cheese Tart (acookbookcollection.wordpress.com)
• Great British Bake Off: is Mary Berry using shortcut pastry? | Media Monkey (theguardian.com)

 

Emergency Saturday Breakfast: Feta, Sun-dried Tomato and Pesto Muffins

Breakfast should be the most important meal of the day. My weekday breakfasts usually consists of a banana with a cup of tea at my desk while reading my emails, so I really look forward to my Saturday late-morning breakfasts!

In the UK, 7.2 tonnes of food is wasted each year. Love Food, Hate Waste estimates that this costs £12bn per year. Unimaginable in the developing world… So in my efforts to waste less food, and save money, I try to shop a couple of times a week and buy enough food for a few meals. However as life gets pretty busy, tiredness takes over and that trip to the supermarket on the way home from work is just far too much effort!

On a regular basis this results in my partner telling me on a Saturday morning that there is nothing for breakfast then looking at me expectantly. The last thing we both want to do is leave the house to pick up food from the local convenience store, so a quick rummage through cupboard stores and the fridge, coupled with a little imagination usually results in breakfast of some description. Today this was Feta, Sun-dried Tomato and Pesto Muffins. As long as there is 1 egg, oil and flour then savoury muffins are easily made with any kind of filling. So this is when the fridge raiding comes in!

Finding a block of feta cheese, I took inspiration from this recipe for Sundried tomato, Feta and Herb Muffins and adapted the recipe for what ingredients I had. There was only a drop of milk left in the bottle, so I used natural yoghurt instead.  I used half a block of feta as there was no Cheddar. I also found a little sun-dried tomato pesto and put the rest of the jar in (about 3 tsp) so skipped the herbs.  I had to add some extra flour as the batter was quite runny. Luckily I could save the milk for my essential morning cup of tea.  20 minutes later, breakfast was ready!

The sun-dried tomato pesto gave the muffins a lovely colour and loads of extra flavour. I think the yoghurt added richness and helped to keep the muffins lovely and moist, so I will keep using yoghurt in place of milk from now on. I’ve made savoury muffins for many emergency Saturday breakfasts and these have been the tastiest by far!

Feta, Sun-dried tomato and Pesto Muffins

Related articles

• The Easiest Savoury Muffins in the World! (cookingwithonehand.wordpress.com)
• Spinach, feta and tomato muffins (makes 6). Inspired by Emelie (foodandother.wordpress.com)