Stuffed Zucchini

I planted a garden for the first time this year, and since I don't really know much about gardening, I just shoved plants in the ground whenever I had a little spot in the garden that wasn't filled. So when I had a little bit of a row, I planted 4 hills of zucchini. One of my plants seems to be taking steroids. It has produced 2 full fruits, each one going from about an inch to 8 inches in about 4 days. It's nuts!

Anyway, I had a zucchini to use, and I needed a recipe, so to Fannie Farmer I went. She doesn't have a hundred zucchini recipe as I'd have liked, but she did have a couple. Here's my take on the stuffed zucchini. It's a little different from my usual stuffing, as I don't usually use bread crumbs, but I wanted to make it more like the recipe, so I tried to follow along sort of closely.


I used:
2 squash (1 zucchini, 1 yellow)
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lb. ground beef
2 tomatoes, chopped (I used one of my GIGANTOR tomatoes, so only one. And as you can see, it was enough!)
1/2 c. cornbread crumbs (Fannie calls for bread crumbs, but I was trying to do gluten-free a while back, so I had some leftover cornbread made into bread crumbs, waiting to be used)
1 tbsp. Italian seasoning
salt & pepper to taste
It wasn't in the recipe, but I also added 1/4 c. parmesan and 1/4 c. shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 350

Put squash in to steam for about 10 mins

Meanwhile, saute onion in olive oil until translucent

Add garlic and ground beef and cook until no pink left in meat

 

***NOT PICTURED: Remove zucchini, cut lengthwise, and remove seeds and a bit of pulp 

Add zucchini pulp and tomatoes to meat mixture and cook a few minutes

 Add cornbread crumbs, Italian seasoning, parmesan and salt & pepper and stir until blended

 Fill cavities hollowed out in zucchini, place in pan/baking dish/casserole pan and bake 30 mins.

 Midway through, add about a tbsp. of shredded cheese to each zucchini and return to oven for remaining time.

Fannie doesn't call for any cheese, but since I had to use Italian seasoning instead of parsley and basil as Fannie directed (I didn't have those), I thought I'd give it a bit of Italian flavor. Hence, the parmesan. Also, I don't know how you could make stuffed ANYTHING without covering it in cheese. So I added that as well. I always cover my stuffed veggies in cheese. If you want to leave it off, I'm sure it would be good anyway.

This turned out really well. I'd never used bread crumbs or parmesan in my stuffed veggies before, and I can't say I noticed much different with the bread crumbs in it. But they were definitely good. I would make this recipe again for sure. It did make a bit more filling than I could fit in the squash, so I used the leftovers to stuff a couple peppers I had on hand. Yay for leftovers!

For another stuffed pepper recipe, see this post.