A well-seasoned and comforting meal to ease you into the autumn months
At this time of year, baked tomatoes stuffed with rice and surrounded by a packing-chip sea of potatoes are typical all over central and southern Italy, and in many other places besides. So much so that when I see a tray of those wrinkled red caps in a bakery or canteen-like tavola calda (literally, “hot table”), it doesn’t cross my mind that the hollowed-out tomatoes underneath might be filled with something other than rice. It was only when the woman behind the counter was wrapping my two portions of cannelloni and four slices of margherita pizza that another person’s order alerted me to the fact that these tomatoes were in fact filled with breadcrumbs, chickpeas, sausage, cheese and herbs. Suddenly, the tomatoes were the most appealing item behind the steamed-up glass, and the only thing I could want. We were in Tavola Calda in Latina, just south of Rome, during the lunchtime rush, which is why I didn’t feel able to add to my order, but then I was dissatisfied with my lunch.
But dissatisfaction gave me a reason to pull Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food from the shelf, for her chapter dedicated to stuffed vegetables, which draws inspiration from Turkish, Uzbekistani, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi Arabian and north African recipes. Having noted that almost any vegetable can be stuffed, Roden adds that the most common filling for a hollowed-out vegetable is a well-seasoned mix of chopped onion, minced meat, rice, chopped parsley, and maybe chopped tomato; and she then goes on to give seven filling variations – some with rice, some with meat (no pork), and with various herbs and spices. She also provides a not disappointing filling including chickpeas, which is what I have adapted, also with inspiration from the busy Tavola Calda, for this week’s recipe.
