Like many Americans, I grew up thinking of stuffed vegetables as a dish of hollowed-out peppers filled with a heavy mixture of rice, meat, and Italian tomato sauce. However, in the Middle East, stuffed vegetables are an entirely different animal. Imagine not just peppers, but also carrots, onions, tomatoes, beets, zucchinis, and potatoes, filled with a warm rice and vegetable filling infused with startling combinations of spices. These vegetables, hollowed out with an apple corer (or long vegetable corer) and stuffed with rice and the insides of the vegetables, are spiced with cinnamon, allspice, cumin, cardamom, and ginger, depending on the cook’s origin. Though this slightly tart dish infused with a hint of tomato and lots of lemon is not always beautiful to look at, it is a classic homemade comfort food of the region, stacked through the centuries in clay pots and slowly, slowly cooked in the oven.
Stuffed Vegetables
Ingredients
- 4large onions
- 4small zucchini (or 2 medium zucchini, cut in half crosswise)
- 2medium tomatoes
- 2bell peppers
- 1cup short- or medium-grain rice
- 1stalk celery with leaves, diced
- 3heaping tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 ½teaspoons salt, or to taste
- ½teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½teaspoon ground cumin
- ½teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½teaspoon ground allspice
- Juice of 2 lemons, or to taste
- 3tablespoons olive oil
- ¼cup chopped parsley, for garnish
Yield: 6-8 servings
Preparation
- Step 1
Cut 1/2 inch off the tops and bottoms of the onions, peel, and microwave for 3 to 4 minutes (to help separate the layers). Cool to room temperature. Using a paring knife and your fingers, gently pull the inner layers out of the onions, keeping the shell about 1/8 inch thick. Reserve the inner onion layers for the filling.
- Step 2
Cut the stems off the zucchini and, using a paring knife or apple or vegetable corer, hollow out the insides, leaving a shell about 1/8 inch thick. Then, also using a paring knife, hollow out the tomatoes, leaving a shell about 1/4 inch thick, and squeezing the juice into a bowl. Cut about 1/2 inch off the top of the peppers, then remove and discard the seeds. You should have 12 vegetable shells in total. Reserve the inner pulp from the vegetables.
- Step 3
Dice all the reserved onion and vegetable pulp with a knife or in a food processor. Put the pulp in a large mixing bowl with the rice, celery, 1 tablespoon of the tomato paste, salt, pepper, 1/4 teaspoon of cumin, 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of allspice, and the juice of 1 lemon. Mix well, then stuff the vegetables with the filling, leaving almost 3/4 inch at the top for the rice to expand.
- Step 4
Grease the bottom of a large, heavy-bottomed pot with a tight-fitting lid with the olive oil, then arrange the stuffed vegetables, in a single layer, standing the zucchini up. Stir the remaining tomato paste and juice from 1 lemon into 2 cups of water and pour the liquid over the vegetables. Add remaining cumin, cinnamon, and allspice. Set a heatproof plate on top to weigh down the vegetables, then cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Lower the heat and simmer gently for 1 hour, checking about halfway through cooking and spooning some of the liquid into the vegetables to help the rice cook. Add a little more water if necessary.
- Step 5
Using a slotted spoon, carefully remove the vegetables to a serving platter. Spoon some of the extra cooking liquid over the vegetables, then sprinkle with the remaining juice from half a lemon and garnish with the chopped parsley.