Sausage and Millet Stuffed Red Peppers

Prior to baking

This is one of our favorite family recipes.  We have adapted it from one of James Beard's Cookbooks: Cooking with Grains.  Mr. Beards recipe called for very little millet; 1/4 cup.  This religates the millet to a flavor, we like the taste of toasted millet and add 3-4 times the amount of millet to the recipe.  The original recipe also called for 8 stuffed green peppers, we stuff one red pepper for each person and add zucchini and yellow squash as a border around the left over sausage and millet.

Sausage and Millet Stuffed Red Peppers

1 cup hulled millet

2 1/2 cups water

1 tsp. salt

4-8 red peppers

1 lb of Italian Sausage

1 medium onion finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic minced

2-4 T of curry powder

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 cup chicken stock

croutons or bread crumbs

sprinkle of Parmesan cheese

 2  tomatoes, sliced

Toast the millet in a heavy cast iron pan until it is golden.  Takes about 5 minutes on medium high.  You'll need to shake the pan a lot in order to keep the millet from burning.  Toasting greatly improves the flavor of the millet, I only skipped this step once. 

lightly toasted millet at left and raw millet at right

 Add the salt and millet to the boiling water, set to simmer and set a timer for 20 minutes.  When the timer goes off, fluff the millet with a fork and let cool.  

Fluffy cooked millet

While the millet is cooking, cut the tops off the peppers, with a teaspoon remove the pith and seeds.  Boil the peppers for one minute in boiling salted water and also the sliced zucchini and yellow squash if your going to use them.  We boil the squash for about 4 minutes.  Brown the sausage in a large skillet, add the chopped onions, salt, curry powder, garlic and several grinds of black pepper.  Cook the mixture for 10 minutes on medium low, stirring often. 

 In a large bowl lightly beat 2 eggs, add the chicken stock, sausage mixture and millet.  Mix well then stuff your peppers.  If your using the squash make a border, then fill with the sausage-millet mixture.  Cover with sliced tomatoes, sprinkle with breadcrumbs or croutons (I forgot the croutons for the picture) and then sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Bake at 375 degrees for 50 minutes.  We usually just serve this with fresh bread, plenty of vegetables and grain are in the main dish.