Stuffed peppers

Eastside Road, November 5, 2015—

AT LEAST SIX FEET of Cook's bookcase is devoted to Gourmet magazine. One day perhaps I'll write about Gourmet: it was unique in its combination of gourmandise and literature, bringing the foreign kitchen to the American audience from the early 1940s, I think it was, down to just a few years ago, when Condé Nast unbelievably (and rather cruelly) shut it down during the 2008 recession. The loss is lamentable.

We began subscribing to it as early as we could afford to, sometime in the early 1970s I suppose; and for years I visited used magazine stores (yes, such things did exist at one time) to pick up single issues we'd missed. One time I recall we stopped in a junk shop down near Santa Maria and scored several bound annual volumes; on getting them home we discovered each was missing three summer issues — I suppose because the previous owner vacationed abroad in those days, and skipped buying those copies.

Cook cooks from the magazine yet. Tonight she turned to the January 1969 issue: we had these stuffed peppers, from a feature by Naomi Barry in the series "Gourmet Holidays" that ran for several years. This Holiday was in Florence, and among the several pages of close-set type (no magazine would print so many words today!) there appeared a recipe that's been a favorite at our table, stuffed peppers.

I won't try to reproduce the recipe here: it involves bell peppers, though we've done it with Anaheims at times; and a stuffing based on bread, tuna, capers, olive oil, and I don't recall what else. It's a substantial dish, a simple dish, filling and delicious. With it, sliced tomatoes and some nice green olives; afterward, the green salad, then a dish of rocky road — excuse me: "Petaluma Pothole" — ice cream.

Rosé, Château Guilhem (pays d'Hérault), 2014

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants