Necessity..the mother of pleasant surprises

With a wind chill of -30 yesterday I tried to cook with the oven all day. Bread, rising for the previous 48 hours in the garage started the day. Stuffed peppers were next but I did not think I had enough to go around. Looking for more "filler" , I used the last of a package of sun-dried tomatoes [ not in oil ]. These, rehydrated, mixed with sauteed onion, garlic, bulghur cooked in stock, browned ground lamb and seasoned with smoked hot piementon [ from a trip to Spain this summer] regular paprika, oregano, salt and pepper made a very rich and complex dish and kept the oven on for another hour. I used some of the dried tomato/piementon/soffrito mixture with some canned tomatoes and made a sauce to put over the peppers. The dried tomato/smoked piementon combo was so good it will reappear in other dishes in the future.
Braised beef short ribs were next keeping the oven going another 3 hrs and finally, individual flourless chocolate cakes . All together 7 hours of oven time - probably not energy efficient but the house was very warm and smelled great .

[Jenise]

Couldn't agree with you more: some of the best and more unusual ideas I have come from having to substitute something else for a normal staple.

Your dish sounds great: I've used the smoked pimiento for stuffed peppers too. Got that idea when I was on that stuffed pepper jag about a year ago and only had the fire roasted muir glen toms in the pantry. Loved the smokey fire taste so much that I added the spanish pimiento to punch that out even more. Did you rehydrate the dried tomatoes?

Yes, rehydrated with hydration water used in the sauce. I like the idea of a triple whammy - fire roasted tomato, rehydrated sun dried tomato and smoked piementon - seems like a great combo for ....something !