Peppers with stuff

Just to keep up appearances that I actually cook healthy food in between all my baking, I tried to find a recipe to blog about which would not contain sugar, butter or cream. Also, my sugar, cream and butter overloaded derriere actually needs a healthy recipe or two. Actually it needs about two years of healthy recipes. I'll try to make it to next weekend before I do another baking post. Whoops, actually realised there are a few more baking posts coming up soon... I think I have a serious problem.


But I'll try to get down from my sugar high for long enough to finish this post. This is a recipe inspired by my mum's amazing salmon pie, one of the comfort foods of my childhood. And to be honest, she still makes it, and I still thoroughly enjoy it. The pie has a filling of rice, salmon and boiled eggs, and it's all baked in a puff pastry crust. And it's best enjoyed with a generous helping of garlic butter on top. Me and my sister always wanted to go for the pieces right at the end, as you got the biggest amount of puff pastry that way.


While still drooling over the memories of my mum's pie, I tried here to recreate some of the flavours but making it more healthy. I have basically kept the salmon and the eggs (and keep dreaming of the puff pastry and garlic butter...). Instead I've stuffed it all inside peppers. I love both stuffed peppers and stuffed tomatoes, and do them with all kinds of fillings. Minced meat with spinach and onion, tuna with olives, or just go veggie with onions, feta and olives. So this time I did salmon, quinoa and leek as salmon was on sale last time I went grocery shopping, and I think salmon and leek go amazingly well together. The quinoa makes a nice addition of healthy carbs and some extra protein, although with the salmon and eggs, this dish is rather rich on protein already. 


Stuffed peppers (serves 4-6):
6-8 large sweet peppers
85g quinoa (uncooked weight)
1/3 veggie stock cube
250g salmon
3 eggs
2 leeks
1 onion
100g spinach
30g dill
200g cherry tomato
black pepper
garlic pepper


If making 6 peppers, each contains 250 kcal (10g fat, 25g carbs of which 10g sugar and 17g protein).


The howto:
Boil the eggs, and cook the quinoa with the stock cube according to the instructions on the pack. Season the salmon with pepper and garlic pepper and cook in the oven until medium (don't over cook). Fry onions and leeks for a few minutes, and add spinach and keep on stirring in the pan until the spinach has wilted. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. In a big bowl, mix the quinoa, the salmon (torn into small pieces), finely chopped or mashed eggs, the leek-onion-spinach mix and finely chopped dill. Season generously with the garlic pepper. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove seeds. If the peppers won't stand up, trim the bottom of the pepper flat. Put a cherry tomato in each pepper, add stuffing until half full, add a few more cherry tomatoes, and fill with stuffing. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

The verdict:
I'm the first one to admit this might not be the most exciting food in the world. However, I love the combo of salmon, leek and dill. And to be quite honest, I'm a big fan of eggs as well, although for some reason I always feel slightly odd admitting that. There are so many variations you could do with this dish. If you feel decadent, add some grated cheese on top. If you want to do a low carb variation, leave out the quinoa. If you don't have quinoa, but don't mind the carbs, substitute with couscous or rice. It's low in calories, high in nutrients, and if you use different coloured peppers it's really pretty too.