Hubby loooves Thai food, especially curry. There is one Thai restaurant in town that he would love to be a member of, if possible. Every time we went there, his order was either green, yellow, or red curry. After he finished all those three in three restaurant visits, he would start the cycle over again.

One Saturday morning, I found a bunch of Thai basil in our CSA box. He picked up the vegetables by himself that morning, and I forgot to tell him what herb he should have picked, so I smiled when I saw what he picked. I knew he tricked me because days before, he was craving Thai food but I was craving Vietnamese noodle. Since it was too late for a dinner and the Thai place was far away, he agreed to disagree. Anyway, he admitted that he wanted me to cook Thai food, or something like it.
In the fridge that week, we had banana peppers piling up. I didn't know how to cook it and honestly, not crazy about it. Fortunately, I've found a magic solution for any vegetable I was not crazy about: stuffing it! Stuffing could take extra steps, but satisfaction is at the other end of the process.

I totally made up this dish. The stuffing ingredients were leftover vegetables I had that time (including the inside part of zucchini. The outer part was for
this salad). I like to laugh at myself when I did that kind of thing. I tried not to waste food especially since we don't have composting facilities at our apartment. I even get sad whenever I toss vegetable peels in a trash can. That's why I often feed them to rabbits at my church's yard.
We love this food, and I got double rewards because I loved seeing hubby enjoying it.
Curried Stuffed Banana Pepper
Ingredients for stuffed banana peppers:
12 banana peppers
1 chicken breast, grounded
5 small carrots, finely grated (I like to grate them myself because store brought grated carrot usually isn't fine enough)
1/2 onion, finely diced
1 red or green pepper, finely diced
1/2 small zucchini, finely diced
1 tsp grated ginger
1 Tbs corn starch
Soy sauce
Salt
Pepper
Wash the banana peppers. Make a slice all the way down the length of the pepper then remove seeds carefully.
Mix the rest of the stuffing ingredients. Add one or two tablespoons of water if the mixture is too thick.
Stuff the peppers with the chicken mixture. I put the chicken mixture in a sandwich plastic bag and cut one corner at the bottom. I found that it made the stuffing part easier than using a spoon.

Ingredients for curry:
1/2 red onion
5 cloves of garlic
3 candlenuts
3 kaffir lime leaves
2 stalk lemon grass, cut to 5 segment each
1 cup fresh Thai basil
2 tsp turmeric powder
1 cup coconut milk
3 Tbs fish oil
Salt
Sugar
Pepper
Grind onion, garlic, and candlenut using mortar and pestle or food processor. Sautee the onion mixture until fragrant. Add the rest of the ingredients.
Carefully, places stuffed banana peppers in the skillet. Cover the skillet and simmer until the chicken is cooked. Once in a while, pour the soup over the pepper.
Serve with warm rice.