{little dom's}
Los Feliz is a hipster’s food lover’s paradise. And everything is a short walk away! No fighting for next-to-none street parking! Nestled among a strip of tiny local shops and restaurants is Little Dom’s, a throwback Italian restaurant with the best fried cheesy rice balls you’ll ever find.
Little Dom’s
www.littledoms.com
2128 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 661-0055
Happy 2012 (and 2 year blogiversary to me)! I’ve awoken from a lengthy holiday food coma and can finally show you all the delicious causes of said food-induced power nap.
The family and I spent Christmas in AZ to visit my brother and sis in law. While I’ll still consider the state “weird,” I do love that they have Dunkin’ Donuts. I mean seriously, CA. Let’s get it together. All of America runs on Dunkin’ EXCEPT the golden state.
Among the piles of french crullers and chocolate w/ sprinkles, I did manage to eat some actual food while in the Grand Canyon state:
“Bell peppers” threw off the alliteration I had going there. But anyways…
Note to self: open windows in apartment before attempting to cook these peppers.
These flavor-packed peppers only need a few ingredients: 1/4 cup of a parmesan/romano blend, 2 tbsp pine nuts, 1 tbsp chopped onions, 3ish cups of loosely packed fresh spinach, 1/4 cup milk, an egg, sausage (sans casing) and 4 colorful bell peppers.
Start by slicing the peppers lengthwise in half and cleaning the seeds like so:
This meal requires you to get very hands on. Add all of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl and get squishing. Knead the mixture until the sausage is smushed, the spinach is broken up and the mixture is all around evenly mixed.
Stuff the mixture into the peppers. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a cast iron skillet and add some peppers meat side down. Cook for about 4 minutes.
Flip the peppers over and continue to cook for about 4 more minutes.
Beautiful!
Stuffing the peppers sideways allows you to cook them more quickly in a skillet (as opposed to upright in the oven) and get that perfectly crispy browned/blackened-ness to them. The most time consuming part of the process? Cleaning the bell peppers. Other than that, they are soooo easy to make. But with pan frying comes clouds of smoke (at least in my tiny shoebox kitchen). But good news is I didn’t have the smoke detector go off…again. Once the smoky clouds cleared, I was able to enjoy a juicy, flavorful stuffed pepper that beats any ground meat-stuffed pepper. A filling, delicious dinner done in just a few minutes…and a great way to use some bell peppers that might be sitting in your fridge that are starting to get a little wrinkly 
This dish is my version of a “heat-and-serve” dinner. No frozen dinners for me! This is an easy go-to recipe when I’m feeling lazy mid-week and I can’t scrounge up any leftovers in my fridge.
Dinner consisting of only 5 ingredients…pre-sliced crimini mushrooms, vodka sauce, whole wheat penne (not pictured), spinach chicken sausage (which I had pre-sliced and frozen a few weeks ago when I bought it) and this crazy flavorful 3 cheese blend of fontina, asiago and parmesan.
While the pasta was cooking and sauce was heating, I browned the sausage slices in a skillet, just a few minutes on each side:
The next and final step was to literally throw everything into a pot, stir well…
and of course, add a very generous helping of the 3 cheese blend:
The cheese becomes wonderfully melty all over the pasta…mmm…
