I prefer jalapeños here, but you can use any sturdy pepper: bell peppers, Anaheims, poblanos, Hungarian wax, even chile manzano. Ditto for the sausage, just make sure it has been finely ground.
1/2poundjack cheese(see note above about various cheeses)
Dried oregano, for garnish
Instructions
To make the sauce, start by getting a comal or heavy skillet hot. Slice the tomatoes in half, and cut the half onion into thirds, through the root so the pieces stay together. When the skillet is hot, put the unpeeled garlic cloves, habanero and onion pieces on the hot iron, and arrange the tomato halves around them. Turn each when they are a bit blackened. The tomatoes will take the longest to blacken.
When each vegetable has gotten a good amount of blackening, move it to the cutting board to cool a bit. Peel the garlic and put that in a blender. Slice the habanero in half and remove the seeds and stem, then put that in the blender. Roughly chop the onions and add them to the blender. Finally, peel the tomatoes and put them in the blender with the stock. Puree. You want the consistency of heavy cream, so add more stock if needed. Add salt to taste.
While the vegetables are charring, roast the peppers. Again, you don't have to do this, but it makes for a better end result. To roast the peppers, I arrange them over my gas burners to char and blister. You can get most of the peppers blistered this way, but you'll need to finish them off by holding them with tongs to get any parts of pepper still green. When each pepper is done, put it in a plastic bag to steam. When all the peppers are in the bag, let this steam for a few minutes, then remove the skins from the peppers. I do this with a butter knife. Do not rinse the peppers if you can stand it; doing so washes away a ton of flavor.
Use a paring knife to make a slit in each pepper then carefully slice off where the seeds meet the stem. Carefully remove all the seeds; it's OK if you have a few seeds still in there, but get most of them.
Cook the sausage in a pan, breaking it up as it cooks. Let it cool enough to work with. Heat the oven to 400°F. Spoon it into the peppers, and stuff in some cheese either before the sausage goes in, after, or both.
Grease a baking sheet and set each finished pepper on it. Bake the pepper for about 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted. Serve with the tomato sauce, which you can heat up if you'd like (it should still be warm by the time the peppers are ready), garnished with the oregano.
Notes
NOTE: You can make the sauce up to a few days beforehand, and you can pre-roast the peppers up to a day before.