In an effort to gear-up for summer and the small clothes associated with the season, my friend Maria and I have shifted our usual girl dates from lunches and dinners at our favorite vegetarian joints, to a cooking-in trade-off.

It’s been really fun to host each other and both of us having really gone to town creating inventive from scratch vegetarian dishes, then pairing with a craft cocktail or organic wine.

Last week it was my turn to host and I wanted to make something really fun but healthy too. I hadn’t make stuffed peppers in a while, and they have always been one of my favorite dishes to experiment with. There are just so many ways you can stuff and pepper and so many types of peppers to stuff!

Green bells were on sale at my local store, so I went with those. I was sort of craving chili rellenos, so I wanted to go spicy, Cal-Mex style.

I used fresh hot peppers, quinoa, black beans, and corn as the main focus. To simplify evening cook time, I make the quinoa and  black beans ahead of time.

If you or the audience you’re cooking for has an aversion to cilantro, you can easily substitute fresh parsley in this recipe. The same goes with hot peppers, seed them or trade out for jalapenos if your spice tolerance isn’t as high as ours was.

The dish presents beautifully, and worked really well as a dinner party main. It’s also really low fat! It could be made totally oil free by just sprinkling with nutritional yeast instead of the cashew sauce, but I’d add some hot peppers to the filling mix if you do that.

I paired mine pepper with a nice red wine, and Maria made Manhattans. You could certainly serve with a side of guacamole or a jicama salad, but since there are greens in the stuffing, I didn’t serve a salad.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Ingredients:

4 green bell peppers

For the cashew nacho sauce:
1 cup raw cashews
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
2 teaspoon canola oil
4 cloves garlic
1 ¼ teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
Dash of dried onion
1 teaspoon turmeric
Dash red cayenne pepper
Two fresh serranos, chopped
4 ounces pimentos, drained and chopped
Splash of soy or almond milk

For the filling:
2 cups chopped collard greens (you can use kale or any other green, really)
1 ½ cups black beans
(rinse if using canned)
1 ½ cups cooked quinoa
1 cup sweet corn
1 cup shredded carrots
½ cup cilantro, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon fresh lemon
or lime juice
1 ½ teaspoons cumin
1 ½ teaspoons chili powder
sea salt

Directions:

To make the cashew nacho sauce:

1. Place cashews in a small mixing bowl and cover with water. Let soak about 30 minutes

2. Place all nacho sauce ingredients, including cashew water, in a food processor or Vitamix and puree until smooth and creamy.

3. Transfer to a saucepan, heat on stove over medium low heat, stirring frequently to prevent sticking and burning, until the sauce has thickened to nacho cheese sauce consistency. Remove from heat and set aside.

 

To make the filling:

1. Prep all veggies and place filling ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix well and set aside until peppers are ready to be stuffed.

To assemble the peppers:

1. Core and seed the bell peppers. Slice in half and place in the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish, inside up so you can fill the pepper. You will probably need two casserole dishes to accommodate all the pepper halves.

2. Fill each pepper within a quarter inch of the top with filling. Pour the nacho sauce generally over top of the casseroles.

3. Bake at 350 for about 20-30 minutes, or until the edges of the pepper are wrinkling a bit and the cashew sauce is starting to brown.

Kat Barry, a St. Joseph, Michigan native, is owner of Kat’s Hot Cakes vegan catering, and co author of “The New Chicago Diner Cookbook: Meat Free Recipes from America’s Veggie Diner.” She also develops recipes for eHow.com, where you can find over 30 of her vegan instructional cooking videos. She is also a certified yoga instructor. Kat currently resides in Chicago, and in her free time she enjoys practicing yoga, sampling local spirits, listening to live music, and getting outdoors. Follow @katshotcakes on twitter. Kat can be reached via email at: kat@katshotcakes.com.