25 August 2010

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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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