Stuffed Tomatoes with Rice

Christian Orthodox (Greek, Russian, etc.) will celebrate Easter next week, for a start of an explanation click here. So this week for me is Lent, even if started a month ago. Lent in Greece means that you can't eat any meat, poultry, cheese, eggs, well nothing that comes from animals which has blood in veins (well that's my mum's definition). During this period we eat lots of vegetables, beans, seafood, pasta and rice.

Here's my grandmother's recipe for stuffed tomatoes and peppers, of course you can do only tomatoes, but peppers give the dish an extra taste.

15 tomatoes & peppers
4 big onions
200 gr. rice
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch of fresh mint
1/2 cup dry black raisins
1 /2 cup pine nuts
1.5 cup olive oil
bread crumbs, salt, pepper, sugar

Slice the top of the tomatoes and with a spoon empty them, try to remove as much you can without poking them and save the inner part, cut the top of the peppers and remove the seeds from inside
Chop (separately) the onions, the mint, parsley
Boil the onions in 1 cup of water for approximatly 1 minutes
Add half the olive oil and allow to color.
Add the parsley, mint, pine nuts and stir
Add the rice and the tomatoes' flesh (keep some for later), salt, pepper and let it cook for one or two minutes
Fill the tomatoes and the peppers put back the 'hat' and sprinkle some bread crumbs and sugar
Pour the remaining olive oil and tomato flesh
Cook 1h 30mn in the oven at 180°

You can keep this for a few days, and it's also very good cold.