Stuffed peppers with curried fish
Stuffed peppers are a traditional Italian course and we have many variations of this recipe.
The one I’m going to show you today is distinguished by the Asian flavors.
Inspired by Thai cuisine, I made these stuffed peppers with curried fish, and, as usual, I was pleasantly amazed by verifying how I enjoy playing with ingredients that don’t belong to my traditional cuisine and how I feel good when I obtain a course so likable and appetizing.
The only problem making this kind of recipes is that some ingredients could be difficult to find in ordinary supermarket, you can get them in an ethnic grocery or online; here below I’m going to suggest you how to replace them if necessary.
Some tricks before directions
Galangal is a herbaceous plant’s rhizome with a spicy and zingy taste, it is in the same family of cardamom and ginger (zingiberaceae).
You can replace it with ginger, as they are very similar.
Kaffir lime (or makrut or combawa) is a citrus fruit native to Southeast Asia.
This fruit is very sour and, in Thai cuisine, they use both zest and leaves, these latters give a typical citrusy and herbaceous flavor to the courses, you can replace his zest with ordinary lime’s one.
Lemongrass is a plant with a cool fragrance, similar to lemon’s one.
His bulb and the tender part of the stalk are finely sliced or grounded in a mortar and used in mirepoixes.
Lemongrass leaves are used to season soups and other courses too, but, being sinewy, they have to be finely sliced.
If you can’t find fresh lemongrass, don’t buy dried one, better you replace it with grated lime zest.
Thai basil is different from ours, leaves are smaller and lengthened-shaped, his flavor remind licorice and anise, but if you can’t find it, you can use as well ordinary basil.
Fish sauce is an ingredient made from different types of fish with fermentation method and it can be used to obtain tastier courses.
If you can’t find it, use more salt or use soya sauce.
To turn out well your stuffed peppers with curried fish, fresh codfish is preferred, but if you want to use frozen one, let it thaw in the fridge, then rinse it and dry it well with kitchen paper (if it’s necessary, squeeze it gently to lose the excess liquid).
Bullhorn peppers are better than ordinary ones because they are tastier and less watery.
Stuffed peppers with curried fish recipe
Ingredients
Serves 4- 350 gr codfish fillets or other firm white fish fillets
- 4 bullhorn peppers
- 200 ml coconut milk
- 2 spring onions
- 2 tablespoons of fish sauce
- 1 egg
- 1 cm of galangal (or ginger)
- 1 stalk of lemongrass
- 1 dried chili pepper
- 1 little garlic clove
- 1 kaffir lime
- 1 teaspoon of Thai curry (or other hot curry powder)
- 1/2 teaspoon of turmerlic powder
- The tip of a teaspoon of salt
- Thai basil leaves as required
- Fresh red chili pepper
- A piece of lemongrass leaf
To garnish
Directions
Remove the hardest external leaves of the lemongrass stalk, then grind it very finely and add the peeled galangal, spring onions and the garlic clove.
Add to this mixture curry powder, turmeric, red chili pepper dried without his seeds and crumbled, fish sauce, coconut milk, egg, salt and kaffir lime’s grated zest.
Stir the mixture with a fork or with a whisk for some minutes to obtain a uniform sauce, then add your fish cut into 1 cm pieces.
Stir well, cover with cling film and put in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
Rinse and dry your bullhorn peppers, cut them a lenghtwise slice to obtain ship-shaped parts (if you’re using ordinary peppers, cut them in half), remove seeds and inside filaments.
Preheat your oven at 200°C in conventional mood, put your peppers in a baking tray lightly greased with vegetable oil, place some Thai basil leaves in the bottom of each piece of the peppers (if you’re using ordinary basil leaves, break them into pieces).
Take the filling from the fridge, stir again and spoon in your peppers until it reaches ½ cm from the top edge.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until the filling get firm but it results still soft and a little damp.
Serve your stuffed peppers with curried fish garnishing with thin slices of red chili pepper and lemongrass leaves.
