Stuffed Tomatoes and Peppers by Vassiliki Leontis is just perfect for this week, melding the flavor of
summer with the start of autumn.
"I remember summer and it makes it linger a little more," said Leontis, who came to Bowling
Green from Greece permanently 18 years ago.
Her dish has a summer taste with the tomatoes and peppers. And it’s good to make on a crisp day – since
the oven’s on for two hours.
Leontis suggested baking a large dish and enjoying leftovers, since the preparation is time consuming.

"It’s best cool or cold. … This dish will be better tomorrow," Leontis said. "You might
as well make a lot of it and eat it over three days."
Taking shortcuts – such as using a blender or food processor – is frowned upon.
"One thing that makes this time consuming is you have to chop everything by hand. … It gives it
texture, otherwise it’s just too pulpy," she said. "For the ladies that want to save time,
this is not the dish."
Her mother, she said, was a wonderful cook, but Leontis didn’t learn her way around the kitchen from her.

After she was married and back in Bowling Green, Leontis taught herself with a Greek cookbook and some
inventiveness.
She came across the Stuffed Tomatoes and Peppers recipe, but played with it to give it a Greek – and
vegan – taste.
"I tried modifying them in my imagination first, the way my mother made them," Leontis said,
adding that she was trying to capture the taste and smell.
She doesn’t adhere to strict Greek cooking, though.
"I’m using less olive oil. Greeks love to use olive oil. I use less because my husband wants less
(for health reasons)." Leontis added, "I only cook with olive oil, no other oil ever. It’s the
healthiest as far as I know and it has a nice flavor."
She became a vegetarian in 2005 and both she and her husband, Neocles, went vegan in 2011.
"For me, I did not want to be part of animal suffering," she said. "We have found that
anything that has a mother and a face should not be eaten."
Outside their North Prospect Street home, the couple grows tomatoes, parsley, oregano, basil and kale.

"We are kale people here," Leontis said.
Serving leafy greens is a culinary tradition in Greece. A favorite dish is kale, dandelion and chard.
"We boil those, drain them and serve them with olive oil and lemon juice," she said. "It
sounds too simple to be good but it’s excellent."
The Leontises met in Greece on a ferry in 1994 when Neocles struck up a conversation. Vassiliki remarked
that she had done her undergraduate work in a small city in the United States. That tiny town: Bowling
Green, where Neocles was teaching chemistry.
"It was fate or something," Leontis said with a little laugh.
They visited on and off and corresponded for two years before marrying in 1996. They have two grown
daughters between them.
When the girls were little, Leontis earned her master’s degree and she is currently working on her
doctorate in philosophy.
Stuffed Tomatoes and Peppers
Ingredients
Baking pan 15×11 inches
9 medium-to-large size ripe tomatoes
4-5 medium size bell peppers (any color)
2 medium size potatoes cut in small wedges
For the stuffing mix
1 quart pulp of fresh tomatoes (the inside of those to be stuffed)
1½ large onions, or 2½ cups of chopped onions (not too fine, not too coarse)
10 cloves garlic, or 1/3 cup minced garlic (not too fine)
1 cup of fresh mint, finely chopped (only leaves)
1 cup parsley, finely chopped (some tender stems included)
1 1/3 cup Arborio rice (as for risotto; my preference), or basmati rice, or other long grain rice
fresh or dried oregano, or finely chopped sweet basil (optional)
handful of pine nuts (optional)
2/3 cup virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
To dress and season the stuffed vegetables in pan
1 cup thick, pulpy tomato juice from fresh tomatoes or 2-3 tablespoons tomato paste diluted in 2/3 cup
water
½ cup virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
sugar
bread crumbs
Wash and arrange tomatoes and peppers in baking pan so that tomatoes are upside down and peppers are with
their stem up. They should not be too crowded in pan so you can put potatoes in between.
Cut excess stem of peppers with a paring knife or scissors to make the upper part of each pepper almost
flat. Cut a slice from each pepper (about ½ inch thick, or less) all across so as to obtain a “lid,”
then remove seeds and inner part from each pepper. Set pepper back into pan.
Cut a slice from each tomato but not all the way across — each slice will be a “lid” and should be
attached to the tomato. With a small spoon carefully scoop out pulp and leave tomato walls intact. Place
pulp (including seeds and juice) in a big mixing bowl and then pass it from a blender so as to obtain
about 1 quart of tomato juice, somewhat thick. This will be the base of the stuffing mix. Place it back
into mixing bowl.
Keep the fine herbs in cool water for a while to wash off any dust or dirt.
Start chopping onions and garlic. Garlic should be minced into bits about the size of a small grain of
rice; onions more coarsely. Do not crush any of these ingredients with kitchen implements or in a
blender; they must be chopped and minced by hand to retain texture in the mix.
Start chopping the herbs — only leaves from mint; you may include tender stems from parsley. Chop as
finely as possible but do not reduce them into a pulp. Add oregano or sweet basil leaves, also chopped,
if available.
Place chopped ingredients in mixing bowl with the tomato base and add the rice, olive oil, pine nuts, and
salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently and well to incorporate everything into a nice, moist mix.
With a ladle or a cup start filling each tomato and pepper. Stir mix from time to time as you fill the
vegetables to retain its consistency. Do not fill to the very rim because the rice will gain volume as
it cooks. Replace lids.
Place pieces or wedges of potatoes among the tomatoes and peppers. Fill all the spaces in the pan. If
some mix is left over, you can put it in some corner of the pan; it will cook like a pilaf.
All the vegetables must be dressed and seasoned before baking. Pour the tomato juice you have prepared
(either fresh or from tomato paste) and the olive oil over vegetables including the little potatoes.
Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle some sugar over lids of tomatoes and peppers, and then do the
same, more liberally, with bread crumbs. The vegetables will give off more liquid as they cook.
Bake in 350 degree-oven for about two hours. Check to make sure lids don’t get burned. If oven is too
hot, cover with foil (at some point) until cooked. Don’t overcook (rice), but potatoes and vegetables
should be done. Lids should be sort of crunchy.
Remove from oven and let cool for quite a while before serving.
• This is a classic Greek vegan dish for summer. I also like it at this time of year to make summer
linger a bit longer. The vegetables are still in season, and tomatoes are ripe now. The same goes for
other vegetables, like zucchini and eggplants, which I also stuff with the same kind of mix. To cook
this dish, buy your tomatoes ahead of time to have them ripen till the day you will cook.
• In my opinion, the key ingredient in this dish is … mint! The dish does not have minty taste, but it’s
very fresh and fragrant, together with the other herbs. I buy a fresh bunch and I use all of it except
the stems.
• Remember: it is not the rice that makes the stuffing for this mix, but all of ingredients together, so
they must be visible in their coarser or finer bits. If it were mostly rice, it would be like a dry and
concrete mass of something. The quantity of rice is a bit tricky to get right and I think Arborio rice
is best for this type of dish.
• Never eat this dish hot! When you eat it cold, you feel like a bouquet is blooming in your mouth. Room
temperature to cold is the rule. For me, it’s best right out of the fridge! The flavors get even better
the next day—if you can wait till then…
• The lids, eat them! The caramelized sugar with the bread crumbs gives them crunch and…well…a surprise
for us! The little potatoes are also delicious as they cook in the fragrant juice.
•  Don’t spoil the taste by adding ground meat, as some people do. Meat masks all the other flavors, it’s
greasy on the tongue, and requires extra preparation. This is the classic recipe, one of the many vegan
dishes for the Greek summer.