Lately I have been on a quest to find some side dishes to accompany our main for dinner. I wanted something relatively easy to prepare in advance and didn’t include the usual meat filling.

With our lives being incredibly busy at the moment, I am trying to simplify my life and as such, simplify the meals I make during the week. So it was important that I could prepare this in advance and cook it later in the day or the following day. It took a bit of modifying of a traditional Spanish recipe to get there. But I was really happy with the results.

Unlike most stuffed dishes, I found this was quite a dry filling before it was cooked, and I worried it wouldn’t work out. However, it drew a lot of moisture from the fresh peppers as it cooked, which in turn cooked the rice and left the dish a lot firmer than I find most stuffed peppers. This was a pleasant surprise. I did however, find the tops of the peppers needed to cover the rice well, otherwise the exposed rice didn’t cook as well, although the rest of the rice within the pepper was fine. So, I would make sure to only fill to the top of the pepper, not allowing any of the filling to overflow.

Serves 4-6, as a side dish

• 4 large Peppers/Capsicums
• 1/3 cup (90ml) Olive Oil
• 1 medium Onion, finely chopped
• 1 tin Butterbeans (Lima beans), drained
• 1/2 tin Chopped Tomatoes
• pinch Maldon Sea Salt
• pinch Oregano, dried
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 1 1/3 cup Calaspari Rice (Paella Rice) or Arborio

Oven 200C / Fan 180C / 400F

Wash and dry the peppers, then using a sharp knife cut the tops off and remove the seeds. Set aside.

Warm a frying pan with a little oil over medium-high heat, then add the onion. Sauté until it is soft and brown. Add the tomatoes, salt, oregano and sugar and continue to sauté for a few minutes – about 10 minutes. Then stir in the drained butter beans and the rice, and bring the mixture to a boil. Remove from the heat and use to fill the peppers. Put the tops on and secure with cocktail sticks and place upright in a deep dish.

Place in the oven and bake for 1 1/2 hrs. Cover with foil if they are getting too brown. Double check the rice is cooked before removing, then cut in half lengthwise for serving.