Goodness, gracious, eight balls of fire!
Last week I told you about Eric’s donation of a eight ball zucchini to our fridge. As promised, we cut it in half, gutted it and stuffed it with all sorts of good things (mostly what we had around the house). So now let me share with you our last meal at Paunack Place.
Instead of using the fresh swiss chard as Ruthie and Eric suggest, I used the filling I made the other week for my swiss chard ravioli. (I had frozen the extra portion). It is simply blanched chard leaves mixed with the stalks, diced and sautéed in olive oil, salt and pepper. I also missed the crutial step of saving the zucchini guts which are also cooked and added to the stuffing. (Oops). We didn’t have bread crumbs handy so I bought frozen biscuits from Trader Joe’s and baked them before I started the cooking process. [A side note about the Trader Joe’s biscuts: they take twice as long to cook as the package states. About 20 minutes at 400ºF.]
Ruthie and Eric’s Simple Stuffed Zucchini
(our adaptation)
This serves 4 as a main course. Can be doubled or halved.
2 eight ball zucchini
4 slices of bacon, chopped
2 shallots, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, pressed
1 cup of thawed swiss chard or spinach (water pressed out)
4 oz (1 cup grated) cheese sharp cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup torn biscuit piecesPreheat oven to 350ºF
For the shell
Halve the squash lengthwise. Trim off top and bottom (stem ends). Scoop out inside flesh leaving half-inch shell. Chop up the inside flesh and set aside [don’t accidently toss or you will be sorry]. Set shells onto a baking dish lined with parchment or a Silpat. [We forgot to steam the shells like R&E suggest].For the filling
Cook bacon over medium heat until crisp and you have 2–-3 Tbsp drippings. Set the bacon and drippings aside, separately. Cook the shallots and garlic in 1 Tbsp of bacon fat until translucent (avoid browning).Add the swiss chard and reserved inside flesh from the zucchini. Cook these until the zucchini is tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste keeping in mind that the shell is unsalted. About 8 — 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
In the remaining 1 — 2 Tbsp bacon fat, brown the breadcrumbs.
Assembly
Toss bacon, 1/2 cup of shredded cheese, and chard-zucchini mixture together. Fill shells with mixture by gently scooping it into the shells (do not over fill). Top with breadcrumbs and remaining 1/2 cup of cheese.
Cook in a preheated oven for 30 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly and melted.
Enjoy with a fork and knife, or just your hands.
We enjoyed ours with a side of steamed baby carrots and yellow wax beans drizzled with some olive oil and seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper.
My favorite part was when Robb realized that the shell was indeed edible. He is too used to eating stuffed winter squash. Speaking of which, I bet the mixture sans the squash guts would be incredibly tasty in a winter squash. Maybe with some wild rice… the possibilities are endless.
I hope the Vincills took a photo of their fridge. When we saw it the other night, their two crisper drawers were packed with eight balls! Seriously, they gave us four more and they still had too many to eat in a week.
Needless to say, we made this again last night (I am eating leftovers as I type this) but we had a different set of ingredients. This time we used thawed, frozen spinach (from our garden), parmesan and cheddar cheeses (because we hardly had any of the latter left), and omitted bacon (because we ate all of it!). It was still just as tasty, though I missed the bacon and I think it was too cheesy this time. It’s a great dish to experiment with.
Oh yes, we also used the first of our homegrown garlic. More on that later.
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