Italian Dad Makes Stuffed Peppers

📖 A hundred recipes my mother never wrote down, finally measured for your kitchen: Link In Comments! Every Wednesday at my mother's restaurant in Bensonhurst, you could smell these from the bus stop. Red, yellow and green peppers stuffed with meat, rice and Pecorino, standing up in a glass dish, baked in tomato sauce until the tops go golden and the peppers are soft enough to cut with a fork. My mother Filomena stuffed forty of them every Wednesday, and she sang the whole time. Come in the kitchen and we make them together, start to finish, the way she did. How to pick peppers that stand up by themselves, a quick fifteen-minute sauce, why the rice goes in half-cooked, chopping the tops into the filling so nothing goes in the garbage, tasting one spoonful before you stuff, how to fill them without packing, the sauce and water in the bottom of the dish, foil first and then golden, and the ten minutes you have to wait. I also tell you about the Friday version from the village outside Avellino where I was born, stuffed with bread, olives, capers and anchovies, and no meat. Six peppers, one pound of meat, one can of tomatoes. Dinner for four, and two for lunch tomorrow. So tell me where you are cooking from, and settle it: rice or bread? 00:00 Wednesday at my mother's restaurant 00:44 Who I am 02:10 What you need 02:51 Peppers that stand up 03:44 A Wednesday sauce 04:32 Why the rice goes in half-cooked 05:24 The filling (keep the tops) 06:22 Taste one spoonful first 07:03 Halfway 07:25 Stuffing them, never packed 08:10 Sauce in the dish, crispy tops 09:00 Foil first, then golden 09:47 The ten minutes 10:20 At the table 11:08 Wednesday nights 11:58 The Friday peppers from Avellino 12:48 Even better tomorrow 13:24 Your job this week 13:51 Next time