Three Pepper Parade

This week's post comes from Cleveland, where my brother used local meat, produce and pasta to create a most excellent photo and meal.

Hello blogger friends! This weekend I used a variety of ingredients from my Fresh Fork CSA basket and made a dynomite Italian dish.

I call it "Italian Three Pepper Parade," or stuffed bell and banana peppers over red pepper pasta. Here's how I did it:

Tony's Italian Three Pepper Parade

Ingredients:

1/2 large onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced, plus more for stuffing (if desired)

4 Hungarian spicy banana peppers (or more, depending on how many you want to stuff)
1 lb Italian sausage

1 tbsp of Italian seasonings (dried oregano, basil and thyme)

1/2 cup of grated mozzarella

1.5 cups Christopher Sauce

8 oz Ohio City Red Pepper Pasta (or any other pasta)

1. Sweat a 1/2 a large onion and half a bell pepper in olive oil with garlic in a large saute pan.

2. Add 1/2 lb of Italian sausage and brown with Italian spices, salt and pepper

3. Remove from heat and stir in cheese while warm.

4. Stuff bell peppers and banana peppers with stuffing.

5. Lay the peppers in a casserole dish and top with Christopher Sauce and fresh grated Parmesan cheese. Throw any leftover stuffing throw into the dish with the sauce. 

6. Bake at 325 degrees to desired texture (20 min left them still firm but tasty). While baking, throw the pasta into boiling water.

7. After cooking the pasta to al dente, stir in some Christopher sauce to keep it from sticking.

8. Top the pasta with the peppers in a large serving dish.

9. Pour the remaining sauce and stuffing mixture from the casserole dish on top. 

About some of the ingredients: the banana peppers, pasta, sausage, and onion all came from our Fresh Fork CSA and were grown farms within an hour of our downtown Cleveland apartment. The sausage was the best Italian ground sausage I've ever had.