I get a lot of French email spam: shopping sites, recipe sites, dating sites….
Usually it gets deleted (along with the English spam) with barely a glance.
A few weeks ago I got one with 15 zucchini (courgette) recipes.
Since it’s zucchini season I had a look – I mean, how could I not?. One recipe was for stuffed zucchini.
When I’ve stuffed vegetables, and I’ve stuffed a lot of vegetables, I’ve usually partially cooked the vegetable and fully cooked the meat before stuffing.
The French seem to assemble it all raw.
I decided to follow the French recipe.
With modifications, of course….
I still wanted a sauce of some sort, so I tossed in some cherry tomatoes.
Stuffed Zucchini (Courgette farcies)
Total time: 55 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 medium yellow squash or green zucchini
- 8oz (240gr) ground beef
- 3 shallots, minced
- 1/2 red bell pepper finely chopped
- 1 rib celery, very finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tbs chopped, fresh parsley
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup (2oz, 60gr) shredded cheese, any flavor – I use Emmenthal
- 1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half
- 2 tbs olive oil
Instructions:
- The zucchini:
- Cut zucchini in half the long way.
- With a small spoon scrape out the seeds and flesh from the center forming long boat-like shells. Leave a bit at either end to hold in the filling.
- The stuffing:
- Combine beef, shallots, pepper, garlic, celery and parsley. Season with salt and pepper.
- Mix well, lightly shape into 2 rolls and press into zucchini halves.
- Cover with foil and bake, 400F (200C), for 20 minutes.
- Combine tomatoes and olive oil.
- Remove zucchini, add cherry tomatoes to the bottom of the pan and return to oven (covered) for another 20 minutes.
- Uncover zucchini, sprinkle with cheese and return to oven for 5 minutes, until cheese melts.
- Serve, cherry tomatoes on the side.
They were good… Kind of like meatloaf in a zucchini boat. I’m not sure I’ll do all of my stuffed vegetables this way, but it’s good for a change.
The nicest part was the prep was very quick. It’s always fun to do something that’s a bit different.
I have a question for you all….
Do you find the weekly food shopping to be exhausting?
It shouldn’t be tiring…. I mean, one is walking, at leisurely pace, in a climate-controlled environment, leaning on a trolley. Over the course of an hour, one picks up food items and places them in said trolley.
That’s not exactly an aerobic work-out.
When I lived in the US I would push the ‘cart’ to the cashier and idly read a scandal sheet while the food was being scanned, bagged and sent to pick-up. In due time I would, pay, walk to my car and drive to pick-up where the groceries would be loaded into my car.
Here I push the ‘trolley’ to the cashier where I unload the food onto the belt and, at the other end, I put the food into the bags that I brought with me. Then I put the bagged food back into the trolley, pay, push the trolley out to the parking lot and load the groceries into my car.
Still….. It’s really not that much work.
So why is it so tiring?
Well, I do have to haul it all into the house, unpack it and put it away.
Still….
Maybe it’s just a Friday thing.
Minimizes prep … sounds good; looks better.
Maybe we’re just tired to begin with.
The courgettes look really tasty.
Our shopping day is Monday because that is market day in our shopping town. It starts with calling in at the baker en route ( wood fired oven so worth the detour), a walk into the market to buy salade and moules plus what ever else we need that looks good. My other half puts that in the cool box whilst I start the supermarket shopping and then he helps me finish whatever I have left to do. We then do what you do with the unpacking, packing, unpacking at home and both of us end up exhausted! We hate to admit it, but we suspect it may be age related!
I remember so well the huge numbers of bags of shopping when all the children were growing up. I did not mind the actual trip to the supermarket but hated with a passion the unpacking.
Those courgette look like little boats, tasty ones.
>Over the course of an hour…
That’s where shopping wears me out. I can’t stand to do it and will race the cart around picking up everything on my list, and not browsing for anything off my list, in order to minimize the time spent. I wish I were rich enough to have a trusty sidekick to do all shopping for me. Sometimes we buy something on Amazon just to avoid traveling to a store for a one-time-purchased item.
Tanna, I really liked the minimum prep… easy for summer!
Gill, I am not willing to acknowledge any possibility of anything being age related. I’m firmly in denial. I blame it on the French shoppers who spend all their time blocking the aisles, talking lol
Kate, when I was doing that I was shopping at the store that bagged it and put it in my car. Still had the unpacking…..
Dan, I stick to my list, too. and have it n aisle order to minimize running. I get really irritated when I forget something at the far corner of the store. And our stores are really big lol