.: evil jungle prince :.

I cooked up a storm yesterday so I'm going to be busy today posting everything. Fortunately we've recently gone on a summer schedule, which means three day weekends for the duration of the summer season. I'm not complaining!

Yesterday's lunch was Greek stuffed vegetables, or yemistas/gemistas (Γεμιστά). I ate my first real gemista on the island of Santorini, late at night after arriving on the island. I could barely believe my tastebuds, and taken together with the live music, dancing, and cool breeze blowing in from the Aegean I experienced that night, it made for a little moment of pure heaven.

This dish is Greek cuisine at its best. Like Vietnamese cooking, the Greeks are so fond of combining healthy foods such as vegetables and grains with fresh herbs; the results are both healthy for the body and exciting to the palate.

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Begin by cutting the caps off four bell peppers and 2-3 ripe tomatoes. Remove the seeds from the bell peppers and remove the interiors of the tomatoes with a spoon. Retain the tomato pulp and chop. Set aside.

2. Saute one large onion in 3/4 cup of Greek olive oil. Next, add a handful of chopped mint leaves, handful of chopped dill, and a handful of chopped parsley. Once the fresh herbs are soft, add the tomato pulp and 1 tsp of tomato paste. Add just a little water unti the rice is cooked half-way (in other words, just beginning to get soft.) Note: if you are only making stuffed peppers without stuffed tomatoes, add a can of chopped tomatoes as a substitute for fresh tomato pulp.) Add salt and pepper to taste. (I used about 2 tsp salt, as its hard to judge at this stage how the final result will taste.)

3. Next, stuff the vegetables about 3/4 of the way with the half-cooked rice. Top of the remaining space with water, and then replace the caps. The idea here is to cook the rice the remainder of the way inside the vegetables, so that they absorb the excess moisture and flavors of the vegetables. Don't fill the vegetables all the way because the rice will be plumping up further. Cover the surfaces of the vegetables with a liberal amount of olive oil.

4. Bake the vegetables until they are soft and have begun to char on the outside. This slight blackening is a key flavor in the dish.

5. Allow to cool and serve at room temperature. You will find that the flavors can be enjoyed better at this temperature than when piping hot from the oven.

Opa! Serve with a glass of iced ouzo and water, if available!