Stuffed Squashes

The other day at the PYO, I took a shortcut between two rows of beans and saw what appeared to be courgette plants, but they had round bright yellow fruit - squashes! (I guess, Wikipedia isn't too clear on it, maybe they are a type of golden courgette or zucchini).



And I had to pick a couple. The chap at the till said they were large and possibly over-ripe. And indeed they were, the seeds were almost fully mature, when I cut them in half.



I thought scooping out the seed bits, then filling up with minced meat and baking in the oven would work nicely, so I set to work. I'd planned ahead and had defrosted a batch of Bulgarian meatball mixture.

So, I turned the oven on to 200 degrees C and in addition to cutting the two squashes in half, I also cut off a slice at each end, so that the halves could stand up.

I was worried that the squashes would be very sweet, so sprinkled each half with salt, dried dill and dried savory, before distributing the mince mixture between them. 575 g of mince mix fitted quite nicely into the four halves.

I brushed a little grapeseed oil on a baking tray and placed the four halves on that, then drizzled a bit more over the top edge of each squash half, but not the meat as it was pork and had enough fat of its own there. This was a lot quicker to do than I expected. I wondered if I needed to do something more and decided to sprinkle two of the halves with polenta to get a crispy coating on top of the mince, to see how it would taste.



So into the oven and bake for an hour, at which point the squash was soft.

For carbs, I boiled some brown basmati rice and some black Venus rice in separate saucepans. Each takes about 35 minutes. I drained them well, then stirred together to get a more decorative effect. The black Venus rice still coloured off on the brown basmati rice a little.



I managed to time everything just right and dinner was ready when Lundulph came home.

And it tasted very nice actually. When I think about it, it's pretty much Bulgarian meatballs served with courgettes with rice, but presented differently. The squash was indeed rather sweet and tasted a bit like butternut squash, but I'd managed to season it just right.

Lundulph suggested it would be nice to swap the meatball mixture with a hearty chilli con carne, like the one from DinnerDiary. So I might give it another try soon.