summer home cooking

I just love making those stuffed tomatoes and peppers. They are the ultimate summer comfort food, if there ever was such a thing. Back home in France, every family has their own recipe, and evryone's is different.
My own recipe is my grand-mother's, although I have had to alter it a bit, for lack of not finding "rillettes" as easily as I'd like over here.
The stuffing itself is quite fun to make, but a bit time-consuming, so I always make a very big batch of the dish, and freeze half for another time.
If you're having friends around and want something different, or if you're not into BBQs, then this is definitely the dish for you!

This is for six huge tomatoes and three peppers.

First step - prepare the vegetables
* Cut a "hat" off the tomatoes, keep it for later. The bigger the tomatoes, the better!
* With a spoon, delicately empty the inside of your tomatoes and keep the flesh and juice in a bowl.
* Leave your tomatoes upside down to drain - you don't want too much juice.
* Halve peppers lengthwise and take out the seeds.

Second step - the stuffing
 Basically, just mix all the following ingredients together, and season with salt and pepper. Depending on your taste, you can even blend the whole mix together, but I prefer it to be a bit coarser, so I just mix mine by hand.

* sausage meat - about 500 g.
* creme fraiche - three or four big spoonfuls
* three eggs, whole
* a big bunch of parsley, chopped finely
* three cloves of garlic, chopped finely
* flesh of the tomatoes, chopped up (I try and avoid the seeds)
* stale bread (soaked in the juice of the tomatoes)

Finally, stuff your tomatoes and peppers with the (moist but not runny) mix, adda little hazelnut of butter on every vegetable, put the hats back on the tomatoes, and put in the pre-heated oven at 190 for about an hour, or until golden. Bon appetit!

Let me know how yours turn out!