The stuffed tomatoes is a vegetarian recipe, that can be eaten warm or cold, and prepared in advance… let’s see the recipe with Sonia!
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Today I’ll show you a tasty recipe, ideal for the summer season: the stuffed tomatoes. It’s a vegetarian dish, light, fresh and full-flavoured. Excellent either warm or cold, the stuffed tomatoes are perfect if you’re short of time, since they can be prepared in advance and cooked just before serving. But let’s see together what ingredients we’ll need:
• 12 globe tomatoes, of about 7 oz (200 g) each
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 10 basil leaves
• ¼ lb (120 g) of provola or scamorza cheese
• extra virgin olive oil • 1 2/3 cups (320 g) of medium-grain rice
• less than ½ cup (40 g) of grated pecorino cheese
• less than ½ cup (40 g) of grated parmesan cheese
• salt / pepper
• 1 clove of garlic
Let’s prepare the stuffed tomatoes:
Begin by taking the tomatoes and cutting off the caps… keep aside since we’ll use them later. Now, with a small knife, cut around the perimeter… and scoop out the flesh, being careful not to damage the tomato. Hollow out the inside… and collect the flesh in this bowl, that we’ll use later. Take some salt, salt the inside of the tomato, and put it upside down on a rack to lose the excess water, go on this way with the remaining tomatoes.
Take all the tomato flesh and whizz it up with a blender, in the meanwhile bring a pot with salted water to a boil and now add the rice. Boil and drain it a couple of minutes before the end of cooking, since the rice must be very al dente. In a pan, put 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a crushed garlic, then add the tomato puree. Let it thicken and reduce, after that add salt, pepper and finally the chopped parsley and basil.
As you can see, I drained the rice and put into a bowl… and now I’ll add the tomato sauce to the rice.
Now add the cheeses… and sprinkle some pepper; then mix everything. This is the mixture we’ll use to stuff our tomatoes. Of course I’ve left all the seeds in, but if you prefer, you can pass the sauce through a vegetable mill or a sieve.
Now we can move on to stuff the tomatoes, so take one, put some rice on the bottom… and the provola cheese inside, which has been cut into cubes of about 1/3 oz (10 g) each; if you want you can substitute the provola with the mozzarella cheese. So fill, cover… and arrange them in a baking pan. The pan I’m using is 9 by 12 inches, since the tomatoes must be very close to each other, to keep them from falling, that’s why you need a deep baking dish. Go on this way until you’ve run out of tomatoes and ingredients.
It’s time to bake, so line a drip pan with parchment paper and arrange the tomato caps on it. This is our baking pan with the tomatoes close to each other. I’ve drizzled a little oil on the bottom, and now I’ll drizzle some more on top… after that bake the tomatoes at 350°F in static oven for about an hour and put the caps on the rack below, so they’ll cook together.
60 min. — 350°F (180°C)
After one hour, our stuffed tomatoes are ready to be served. If you want them more crunchy on top, turn on the grill 5 minutes before the end of baking time. Besides, I suggest you to serve each tomato covered with its own cap and a leaf of basil on top, in this way. From Sonia and Giallozafferano, bye bye and see you next video recipe.