Rocky Dickerson is running a Savory Stories challenge for July. The goal is to share our "favorite" food related events, classes or meals. Since I love all food, I don't really have favorites, but I can stil figure out things to share! Here is the second post - what to do with zucchini....
I am so excited that my garden is already producing so much better than last year, which was the first time in my life I ever tried to grow vegetables. This year, I started certain plants inside the house in March, let them grow for two and a half months, and then planted them outside. But other plants, I just threw seeds in the ground on June 1st, and those are the ones that have really been doing amazing. I'm just so excited that a little seed can turn into something that can sustain us.
So a few days ago I saw I had two zucchinis that were ready to pick. One was 9" and one was 14". I pulled them out, and then yesterday, I pulled out another 10"-er and I have two more ready to come out today. Oh my gosh, what can I make with this?
On the first day I made a side dish to accompany my fig/proscuitto/caramelized onion/asiago/goat cheese panini which was already planned. I just sauteed chopped zucchini, garlic and beet greens which I gathered from some beet plants. That was a very tasty side dish, but not the point of today's post.
Last night, I made the zucchini the focus of my meal, specifically making stuffed zucchini. Oh my. I've never had stuffed zucchini before and it was quite tasty. So here's how I did it. The original recipe came from www.recipegirl.com but I didn't really follow it too closely in terms of amounts.
The recipe indicated the first thing to do was preheat the oven to 350ºF and spray a 13"x9" baking pan with nonstick spray. I used a baking sheet with foil instead since I didn't pay attention to the size requirements for the zucchini.
Next, the directions were to split an 8" zucchini down the middle and trim the ends. Mine was 14" inches and I didn't trim the ends.
Then use a small spoon to scrape out the insides of each zucchini half taking care not to scrape the zucchini to the skin. Just take enough pulp out so you'll have room to put the stuffing.
Next, heat a skillet to medium heat, spray with non-stick spray and add the following ingredients: the zucchini pulp you just scooped out, chopped, 1/4 finely chopped onion (I used red onion), 1 medium minced garlic clove (I used 3), 1/4 pound lean turkey sweet Italian sausage chopped (I used two pork sweet Italian sausage links).
The recipe then says "cook 4-6 minutes until onions are soft and sausage is cooked through." I took the skin off the sausages, then chopped them and cooked them first for a few minutes until they were starting to get brown. Then I threw the other ingredients in and cooked until everything looked yummy.
The next step was to the drain excess moisture and put the meat mixture in a bowl. I didn't haven't any excess moisture so just threw it in a bowl. Then, in a separate bowl, mix 1/4 cup parmesan cheese and 1/4 cup grated mozzarella. Stir all but 2 tablespoons into the meat mixture, along with 1/4 cup tomato-basil marinara sauce and some chopped fresh basil (I used leftover homemade spaghetti sauce and kept more than 2 tablespoons of cheese out). Finally, put the meat mixture in the hollowed out zucchinis.
Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on the top of the zucchinis and bake for 30 minutes or until baked through and tender.
The end result? A yummy zucchini-based entree, served with a side of homemade potato salad and a green salad made with lettuce also from the garden. The zucchini was a lot more filling than I thought it would be and it was definitely yummo!
As a final note, I'm not having any zucchini tonight!
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