Stuffed Anaheim Chili Peppers covered in Nacho "Cheese" Sauce

 I know there are a lot of vegan nacho cheese recipes floating around out there, but I'm quite proud of this one I concocted on my own! There's nothing fake in here. All the decadence comes from blended pine nuts. I know the traditional route is cashews, but I find that pine nuts blend much better, and they don't even need to be soaked! I've been toying around with making stuffed peppers and treating them like enchiladas. So without further ado, here's the recipe for my creation!




For the filling:
1 cup brown rice
1 cup diced red onion
1 cup corn kernels
1 can black beans
1 ts salt
1 ts cumin
freshly ground black pepper
1 handful of chopped chives or green onion for color

Cook 1 cup brown rice with 2 cups water (its always 2:1). I know people struggle with cooking rice, but just buy a rice cooker and make sure it has a brown rice setting. Really its like Ron Popeil used to say, "just set it and forget it!" Once its cooked add the remaining ingredients and mix it all up.

For the "cheese" sauce:
1 1/2 cup pine nuts
3/4 cups water
3 Tbs lemon juice
1 ts miso paste
2 ts salt
3 Tbs Nutritional Yeast
1 ts garlic powder
1 ts dried minced onion
1 ts paprika (Don't use smoked paprika. Use the stuff that comes in the clear plastic packets in the Mexican section of the grocery store.)

Simply blend until creamy! I have a cheap blender so I have to blend then stir it, then blend again. Repeating as necessary.

For the peppers:
I used 9 Anaheim Peppers and had about half the filling left, so you could probably do about 18! Simply cut the stems off and use your hands to get a fair amount of the seeds and white stuff out. Lightly oil the outsides of the peppers, along with a large sheet pan so they don't stick. Now its time to get stuffing! Its easy to do and went pretty quick for me. Just grab a bunch of the filling with your hands and carefully push it down into the cavity. For energy reasons, I don't often preheat my oven unless I'm baking cookies or some other dessert. So for me, this is when I would turn on my oven to 350 degrees and pop these babies in at the same time. Bake them until their skin seems soft and just a bit shriveled. Once they are ready, arrange a few on a plate and top with the "cheese" sauce.  Here is Ava enjoying the filling with a bit of the sauce. I think she liked it! I hope you do too. Happy eating!