GCC: Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice

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This was my second recipe from our Gutsy Cook line up this past week.

As the recipe in Saveur mentions, Italian has the stuff vegetables thing down pack.  Pretty much any antipasto table will have a vegetable that has been stuffed with meat, other veggies and in this case rice.

What appeal to me about this recipe is that fact that the most time consuming task here is prepping the tomatoes.  You have to trim them, and then scoop out the inner pulp without puncturing the walls.

This little prepping step may be a zilch for some cooks.  No biggie – cut top, scoop out pulp, and cut bottom.  Done.

For my perfect convulsive ODC twin this took a while, since I wanted them perfectly hollow out, and wanted them to stand up tall and pretty and the tops needed to be at the right angle and the bottoms…

Never mind. (I know, I got a problem – I’m trying to deal.  Lets move on.)

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Mediterranean Chicken [on the fly]

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That is what I’m calling this last minute, “lets-see-what I have in the refrigerator to cook the chicken with”.

As I mentioned before, I’m supper gutsy when it comes to cooking savory recipes.  I tend to go a bit off the beaten path and cook with my heart and with no set of rules. 

Sort of like how my mother cooks - By the seat of our pants.

I cannot help myself from deviating as soon as I start any given recipe that I’m trying out.  I blame the fact that I read tons of recipes – I have over 100 cookbooks, 5 different subscriptions to major food magazines and over 50 feeds to food blogs that I read daily in my reader.  When I want to make a recipe with one single ingredient, I tap all of these motivation sources by pulling bits and pieces of every single thing that I read, saw or even tasted.

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Baked Leeks in Béchamel Sauce

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A couple of weeks back when I was planning our Paella party – that never happened, I had round up a couple of tapas recipes to served while our paella was cooking on the open flame.

This dish was one in the list.  Today, as I opened the refrigerator to get some cheese to make myself and Tom a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, I notice the leeks and remember this recipe.  After a bit more of investigating, realized that I had everything I needed to make it and off I went to test my memory bank. I did this on the fly, because after looking for over 10 minutes ALL OVER MY HOUSE could not find the original printed/marked recipe in any of my print outs or books.

I’m happy to say my memory is just fine, thank-you-very-much.

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