recipes: pepper poppers

Well, I will be the first to admit it.  I fell for the large bag of small red, yellow, and orange sweet peppers.  No, they’re not organic, and they’re not local (but they were only shipped from 3 states away), but boy, I couldn’t resist the bargain and number of ideas I had for those babies.

The other night as my daughter begged for something “different” for dinner, I took out the peppers and wondered what I could do with them.  Something reminded me of those jalapeno poppers in chain restaurants so I dug through the fridge and here’s what I created:

Growing Grace Farm’s Goat Cheese and Bacon Pepper Poppers

Ingredients:

Small sweet peppers, tops cut off and seeds removed

Herbed goat cheese (preferably local and fresh)

Bacon cut into pieces that will cover tops of pepper openings (we used turkey bacon, but I can’t wait to get hold of some peppered applewood smoked pork bacon)

tooth picks

Preparation:

1.  Preheat over to 400 degrees.

2.  Spoon herbed cheese into peppers until topped off.

3.  Cut a piece of bacon to cover opening.

4.  Stick a tooth pick through it long ways so that bacon stays together with pepper and keeps cheese from oozing out.

5.  Bake until desired texture–we like our peppers with a little crispness.

6.  Be careful to let cool a bit–the cheese can hold in some heat!

Variations:

Southern popper:  some pimento cheese and a slice of pork bacon on top

Pizza popper:  a dab of marinara, some mozzarella, and a pepperoni on top

Middle Eastern popper:  hummus with an olive on top

California popper:  an artisan cheese with a cube of avocado on top