Punjene suve paprike

The story

Punjene paprike, peppers stuffed with rice and minced meat, are a fixture of Serbian home cooking. Fresh peppers belong to late summer, but dried sweet red peppers keep through the winter. A reader of the regional recipe site Coolinarika notes that small produce shops sell them pressed flat in strings of ten, and a short soak softens them enough to fill. On fast days the filling changes. Orthodox Christians who keep the fasts avoid meat, and the stuffing becomes rice cooked with onion, carrot, mushrooms and paprika, simmered in tomato. The Belgrade daily Večernje novosti presents fasting peppers stuffed with white beans as an ideal dish for the slava of St. Nicholas (Nikoljdan), which falls during the Christmas fast. The cook behind the food blog The Balkan Hostess writes that her family makes lenten peppers for Lenten holidays and for a posna slava, a saint's day kept without meat, and that their smell still reminds her of slava and Christmas Eve cooking. Plan on two or three peppers per person, served warm with bread and a dish of pickled vegetables.