well, stuff me with tuna and call me pepper!

(originally from march 23rd 2011.)

i was feeling adventurous today but rather than do something risky like skydiving, scaling a mountain or sewing, i decided to attempt a new recipe. so i went to the grocery store and bought the necessary supplies for a meal i’ve eaten a million times.

now, you might say that eating something you’ve had a million times is boring or monotonous. clearly, you’ve never been fed by my nonna.

nonna: (n) an italian grandmother, known to pinch cheeks and cook with a level of skill that could bring jesus himself to his knees. they are also very religious. telling jokes of a religious nature, like the one preceding this sentence, will result in one having a wooden spoon, slipper or italian curse word flung at them.

this is probably a good thing she’s never cooked for you though since mass sampling of her food would undoubtedly lead to a religious-like following of my grandmother and thus a great deal of overcrowding at our family events. we’re italian and when it comes to family gatherings, put quite simply, there is no room at the inn, Mary.

ANYWAYS, so i placed a call to 1-800-MY-NONNA and in between badgering me about why i never call (classic nonna) she gave me the recipe for her infamous stuffed peppers. here’s what’s in them: tuna, cheese, garlic, onions, boiled eggs..

**SIDENOTE: in light my various culinary accomplishments to date, i am ashamed to admit that there are some simpler cooking tasks that i have ignored like a red-headed step child. one such thing is the proper way to boil an egg. i kid you not – i have never boiled an egg, my mama has always done it for me. but since nonna’s recipe called for it, i had no choice. i figured, “hey, it’s gotta be the same as boiling pasta, no?” NO. apparently you’re supposed to put the eggs in cold water and bring them to a boil. what did i do, you ask? the exact opposite. *cut to me dropping a cold egg in boiling water*

the result: an explosion, followed by shame. like i told you yesterday, “no one said there wouldn’t be casualties.” in the end, i had to call mama and get help.  

but back to the ingredients… parmesan cheese, black olives, capers, mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce and salaaaaami. basically, you chop anything that can be chopped and you mix all of these ingredients together in a bowl and spoon the mixture into cleaned, halfed bell peppers – whichever colour blows your dress up -though i do not approve of either partial or complete nudity while cooking. things splatter.

anyways, then you put the peppers in a pan with a bit of tomato sauce in it, top the peppers with more sauce and cheese and throw it in the oven until the skin of the peppers is as wrinkled as your oldest living relative.

simple procedure? yes. simple taste? no.

here’s what they looked like when they came out.

and on the inside.

roommate review: today’s critics are my fellow italians chelsea and allannah. no, they’re not my current roommates, but the plan is that they will be next year. and i figured it was only right that nonna’s recipe stay within our own kind.

here’s what they had to say:

chelsea

“the filling was amazing, i could have eaten that and nothing else for the rest of my life. It was like when you eat cheesecake, how you never want it to end. we should make the filling into a cake.”

well, chels, you ruined my gift for your birthday.

and allannah

“even though i’m not a huge fan of tuna, these peppers rocked my friggin’ casbah. i’d say a 9/10. the only way it could have been better is if chad michael murray fed it to me.”

now, allannah only ate one out of her two peppers because she was too full. while this normally would have offended me because food left on a plate goes against everything italians believe in, i have never been happier to see leftovers. this means stuffed peppers for lunch tomorrow. praise allah!

the moral of the story: call your grandmother more often and remember that in both communist russia and theresa’s kitchen, stuffed peppers stuff YOU.

well, that’s what’s cooking in rez tonight!

thanks for reading :)