Sunday, January 13, 2013

Baked stuffed zucchini



On Friday night, I had friends over for dinner while their kitchen is being renovated.  On the menu was Jamie Oliver's Asian-flavoured version of cook-in-the-bag chicken, an old favourite of mine from his Happy Days tour (not the leek and mushroom one that is all over the web), followed by Long and Slow Apples from French Fridays with Dorie.

My friends grow vegetables, so I was the recipient of a very large zucchini.  You can't generally buy zucchini that big, so I thought I would try something new - stuffed zucchini.  A quick Google search later, and I came up with this recipe.  The only changes that I made were to substitute the lamb mince for beef mince, the rosemary for tarragon (I couldn't buy rosemary at the supermarket - how weird is that?), and the parmesan for Dutch smoked that I had in the fridge.

I really enjoyed the end result - it was a hearty meal that didn't take ages to prepare, and used up the entire zucchini.  I think I would add a touch of chilli next time to make the filling sing, but recommend this as a nice change.  My interest in stuffed vegetables is now piqued, and on the same night  that I made this, I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall make baked butternut squash which looked equally delicious - perhaps another dish to add to my repertoire.

7 comments:

Kari said...

What a nice gift to receive - these really do look like jumbo zucchinis! I love how you prepared them.

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

I love stuffed vegetables and it's perfect for when you have oversized or a large amount of them :D

Johanna GGG said...

I am quite partial to stuffed zucchini - have never had the zucchini bumper crop or giant zukes but it never sounds like a bad thing to me - and I think it was a great gift for your friends to bring as thanks for the meal

Finla said...

Love succhini made like this.

Kayte said...

Stuffed vegetables always a hit around here...this one looks like a winner. So strange, my boys LOVED vegetables growing up always, I could not have served too many in a meal, that's weird, isn't it? To this day, they are big vegetable eaters...Mark won't eat eggplant much or Brussels Sprouts or beets at all, but he's pretty good on the rest of it. Not bad for a guy who would only eat corn and green beans when we first married. lol

Elaine said...

It sounds and looks wonderful.

Anonymous said...

That is one large and delicious looking stuffed zucchini!