Beneventana (Benevento Style Stuffed Peppers) peppers)

How many ways can you stuff a pepper? More than you can count, I reckon. Here on the blog we’ve taken a look at this quintessential summer vegetable stuffed with meat, tuna, pasta and eggplant. For this week’s post, here’s one that’s dear to my heart, since it’s from the part of Italy where Angelna was born and grew up, a small town called Apice near Benevento: Beneventana peppers paddedor Benevento Style Stuffed Peppers. That said, you’ll find similarly stuffed peppers all over southern Italy.

You typically make this dish with a particular kind of pepper called Toro Horn—literally “Bull’s Horn”— or croissants ‘for short. They’re long and thin with pointed ends, and come in either bright red or yellow, looking very much indeed like colorful horns if you use a little imagination.

Beneventana peppers padded are filled with a savory bread stuffing flavored with typically southern Italian ingredients: tomato, anchovies, olives, capers, garlic and herbs. Traditionally, you sauté your stuffed peppers in olive oil until they are tender and cooked through, though these days many people roast them in the oven instead.

Yet another simple but truly delicious dish that sings of summer, you can serve Beneventana peppers padded as a side course, antipasto or as part of a summer buffet.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

For the filling:

• 300-350g (10-12 oz) day old bread
• 2-3 small tomatoes, diced
• 6-8 anchovy fillets, cut up
• 50g (2 oz) Gaeta style olive, roughly chopped
• a handful of capers, rinsed and dried
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• a sprig or two of fresh parsley, minced
• a pinch of oregano
• salt to taste
• olive oil

For frying

Directions

Prep and stuff the peppers

Cut off the tops of the peppers and gingerly remove the inner core and seeds while leaving the pepper intact.

Trim the crust off your bread, then crumble the rest with your hands into small pieces or briefly process in a food processor on pulse.

Place the crumbled bread in a mixing bowl. Add all the other filling ingredients except for the oil and mix well. Then drizzle over a bit of olive oil and mix again so as to moisten all the bread. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

Stuff each pepper with the bread mixture, a little at a time, packing it tightly.

Fry your peppers

Now, in a skillet large enough to hold all the peppers in a single layer, fry them in abundant olive oil. Over a medium high flame, start by standing the peppers up in the skillet open end downwards, so the stuffing browns and forms a crust. (You may have to do this holding up the peppers one at a time, depending on how high the sides of your skillet is.)

Then place the peppers on their sides and, lower the heat and partially over the skilled. Sauté the peppers gently, turning them from time to time, until they are cooked through and tender, about 15-20 minutes. Season them with salt as you go. The skins will wrinkle and brown lightly.

Serve

Serve still warm or at room temperature.

Notes

Although they look very much like our Fresno chili peppers, croissants peppers sweet, not hot. They range in size from about 18-25cm (7-10 inches) long and weigh between 120-150g (4-5 oz). It’s the smaller red ones that are most commonly used for this dish. The closest thing that I could find to the traditional croissants where I live were some multi-colored “Sweet SNAPS” peppers. They didn’t have that lively red color, but they worked beautifully all the same. Otherwise any so called “frying peppers” will work, especially if you can find the red ones.

The bread for the stuffing would ideally be a nice pane casareccio you’ve made yourself. Otherwise, good quality Italian or French style country bread will work fine. They crumb should be sturdy enough to withstand crumbling without turning to mush. You can use fresh bread, but ideally you want day old bread, just slightly stale, so it soaks up the tomato and the juices from the peppers. But the moisture from the veggies aren’t super-abundant, so it’s best to use bread that not completely stale.

And here a pro tip: Since you’re working with a long, thin pepper, don’t try to stuff it all at once. Rather, as directed add a little at a time, packing it into the pepper with one finger as far as it will go. then add some more, until the pepper is filled to the brim. Pack it well but don’t jam it, since the stuffing will expand a bit in the cooking. Make sure the last bit of stuffing is all or. almost all bread. If you want to be extra sure that the stuffing won’t ooze out, you can ‘cork’ the open end of your peppers with a small piece of a bread crust, or a bit of the crumb.

Variations

As mentioned, many modern recipes you oven roast the peppers rather than frying them. For this, place the peppers in a well greased baking pan, then season them with salt and drizzle them generously with olive oil. Bake at 190C/375F for 30-45 minutes, or until they are tender and cooked through. It’s probably best to use a bread crust ‘cork’ for this method or don’t fully stuff them. If you want to make this into a more substantial meal, place down a bed of potatoes and bake the peppers on top of them.

Measurements for the stuffing given in the recipe above are just indicative. The only measurement that really matters is the bread, since you’ll need enough to fill the peppers. I used 350g of bread, or 200g after the crusts were removed. That produced more than enough for 8 peppers. The flavorings depend entirely on your personal taste. Some recipes include a couple of tablespoons of grated cheese, either parmigiano-reggiano or pecorino romano, to the stuffing. For a vegetarian dish, you can just omit the anchovies.

Making ahead and leftovers

Since Beneventana peppers padded can be served at room temperature, you can ceratinly make them ahead. If you have any leftover stuffing like I did, you can use it to stuff more pepper, of course, Or just enjoy it as it is, perhaps with a drizzle of wine vinegar. It make a perfectly delicious bread salad. Like panzanella on steroids!