Croatian Stuffed Rice Peppers

Thursday October 11th 2018

Food functions as a universal language, illustrating the history and culture of the place it represents while opening minds, raising awareness and encouraging diversity. And in teaching children about other countries, many turn to food, leading young minds on a path of empathy and tolerance. This is not about them becoming chefs, it’s about having them learn a skill and how much history and knowledge intertwine through food.

Traditional Croatian cuisine is delicious and highly varied, but not always easy to distinguish as being exclusively Croatian. Many popular dishes are inspired by the tastes and traditions of the different nations that have ruled Croatia throughout history. The classic cuisines of Italy, Austria, Hungary and Turkey have all influenced what has now become authentic Croatian cooking.

People from the Croatian Adriatic eat food that is very similar to Italian cuisine while people from Northern Croatia make dishes that are similar to those of Central Europe. Just like Aussies and their love of Vegemite, red paprika is the main condiment used in Croatian cooking. Stuffing vegetables full of savoury seasoned meat and rice is what the Croats do best.

Here, our children have made a recipe that takes in the flavours of Croatian cooking with Punjene paprike. This is a dish that consists of bell peppers stuffed with minced meat, rice, and spices, and cooked with tomato sauce. It’s especially popular in the summer.

Our ingredients list for today include:

700g minced meat (500 g beef and 200 g veal) 2 onions 3 cloves of garlic 60 g white rice for risotto 1 tablespoon of smoked ground paprika A generous pinch of salt and a good dose of pepper

1 tablespoon of Vegeta (a powdered seasoning made from a mixture of spices and various dried vegetables.) 12 peppers (small ones mainly) 1 dl olive oil 50 g flour ½ L tomato sauce 1 L chicken broth 1 small celery stalk

To prepare, we washed the peppers and cut the stem to open a hole and to remove seeds. We also before the lesson, sautéd some onion as well as ground beef and veal. The rice was cooked separately with salt and pepper.

Our children were able to mix all of these ingredients together well into a compact stuffing.

Thereafter, we flipped the peppers over and filled them with the stuffing we just made until they were almost full. (We tried to not overfill them because they’ll burst leaving us with a hideous mess in our saucepan)

The educators took charge and left the lids off as we arranged the stuffed peppers in the oven. It’s better if they are gently packed in so they don’t flip over and bust open when they expand. We roasted each pepper in the oven and placed each pepper into a sauce to cook for 60 minutes.

Once ready, we served our creations with a side of mash potato and sour cream for lunch. These hearty, healthy stuffed veggies were bursting with flavour! This recipe was most definitely made with enthusiasm.