Homemade gourmet

I have this friend you see who is lately very-very fascinated with cooking - she has tons of tons cookbooks, all the seasonings, herbs, peppers etc you can imagine and lately she started to write a blog about her gastronomic triumphs. Which is quite interesting read now that she started to add her own comments, backstories and little funny remarks to the plain recipes. But to cut the long story short she kind of got me interested in cooking-writing too. The trouble is I hardly even follow any recipes. Usually I add garlic everywhere and pickles and lose some other ingredients and basically do all sorts of anarchistic things about the recipes given. Strangely most of the times the outcome is good, sometimes even great... so why not give it a try with some recipes.... I cannot call them actually recipes .. more like ideas, because everything tends to be approximate :)

Stuffed bell peppers.

Chop one medium onion, as finely as you like it. 4-10 gloves of garlic as well according to your taste and the strongness of the garlic (the difference between homegrown garlic and chinese garlic from the store is tremendous in my opinion). Fry them for a minute in a large frying pan in one tablespoon of oil (I like to use the leftover oil from canned sundried tomatos. It gives a nice taste). Add ~400 grams of minced meat (pork, beef, chicken - your choice) and ~ 100 gram finely cut ham. Bake, occasionally stirring, about 10 minutes on medium heat.
To this mixture you can add everything you like: capparis, chopped pickles, finely chopped carrots, chilly... let your fantasy fly.
I also added some tomato sauce, about half a cup and 4 tablespoons (~60 g) of cream cheese. Add some pepper, basil, salt, soy sauce, worchester sauce etc and heat everything for couple of more minutes.

Now take 3-5 bell peppers (3 if they are really big), cut them in half and clean out the seeds and membranes. Place them in a fitting baking pan. Fill the peppers with the mixture compressing with a spoon so that all the nooks are well filled. Cover the mixture with slice of cheese.
As the filling is already well cooked you can adjust the baking time depending how soft you like the peppers. I like when they are relatively crunchy so I keep them in 180 degree C oven about 20 minutes. If you like softer peppers you can cover the pan (with a aluminium foil if it does not have a lid) add some water to the base of the pan (2/3 cup will do) and bake them  ~40 minutes in 160 degree oven. In the end remove the cover so the cheese can turn a bit golden.
I know that usually the stuffing has some rice in it as well. I don't particulary like rice... so I excluded it. You can serve the peppers with rice on side. Or with potatoes. Or with salad. Or with some kind of gravy. No rules! Enjoy!