If you’ve been following my little cooking blog, you’ve probably noticed that we eat a lot of bread, vegetables, and legumes. We do eat meat but not a lot of it. Why do we prefer more veggies and legumes over meat? Well, we both find vegetables and beans more satisfying and tasty. I used to be vegetarian, and while I could easily become a vegetarian again (and Kemal is also interested in this), I feel stronger and better when meat is a small part of my diet.
If you’re interested in meat dishes, they’ll be coming in the future. We enjoy eating buffalo, and I’ve got some great recipes to share with you soon….buffalo lasagna and buffalo chili. We also love buffalo and veggie stuffed peppers, as well as buffalo tacos. 
But since we haven’t prepared any meat dishes recently, I hope you won’t mind if I share another vegetable dish with you that we enjoy.
Kemal and I adore zucchini…love it grilled, fried (with or without breading), baked in bread, or stuffed with rice and veggies, occasionally adding a little ground buffalo to the stuffing. Not this time though. We normally don’t follow any recipe for making stuffed zucchinis…just stuff it with whatever vegetables and rice we have on-hand.
We found an interesting recipe for stuffed tomatoes and peppers in the Greek cookbook we recently purchased, and since we didn’t have any peppers or slicing tomatoes on-hand, we decided to stuff the zucchinis we had in our refrigerator. The recipe calls for raisins and almonds in the stuffing. We weren’t sure how much we would like it, but wow…it turned out to be quite delicious!! :)
Stuffed Zucchini (Adapted from Rena Salaman & Jan Cutler’s Stuffed Tomatoes and Peppers, from “The Complete Book of Greek Cooking,” page 182, Anness Publishing Ltd. 2005, 2008)
Ingredients:
- 4 small zucchinis
- 1 small eggplant
- 1 head garlic
- cherry tomatoes
- 1 bunch green onions
- 1 yellow onion
- 1/2 cup white rice (regular or quick cooking)
- 4 tbsp. raisins
- 4 tbsp. finely chopped almonds
- olive oil, approximately 3 tbsp.
- mint to taste
- parsley to taste
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- tomato paste, approximately 4 tbsp.
- water, approximately 1/2 cup, for cooking the rice
- bread crumbs if necessary (we used panko)
Instructions:
- Wash all the vegetables.
- Peel and dice garlic and onions
- Cut the cherry tomatoes in half.
- Cut the zucchinis in half, and then take a corer to remove the inside of the zucchini. Don’t throw away the insides of the zucchini. Set it aside in a bowl. Put the cut and cored zucchinis aside.
- Peel the eggplant, and then dice it into small pieces. If you prefer to keep the skin on the eggplant, slice the eggplant and soak it in salt water for 15 to 30 minutes so it’s less bitter.
- Chop the almonds. You can use a blender or a chopper.
- If you’re using regular rice, cook it in some water for about 5 minutes. You don’t need to cook it all the way because the rice will cook in the oven. If you’re using quick-cooking rice (5-minute rice), then you won’t cook your rice at all; you will just add it to the stuffing and let it cook in the oven.
- Put some olive oil in a pan (1 to 2 tbsp.) and then add ALL the ingredients in the pan EXCEPT the cut and cored zucchinis. You will, however, add the insides of the zucchinis that you set aside.
- Cook everything in the olive oil for a couple of minutes. If it looks too dry, add a little water. If it looks to moist or like it has too much liquid, add some bread crumbs. You want the filling to have just the right consistency…not dry and crumbly and not watery. When it’s the right consistency, you should be able to form a little ball with the stuffing without anything dripping out of it.
- Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
- Prepare your baking dish by oiling the bottom of it. We cooked our zucchinis in a covered baking dish.
- Let your stuffing cool a bit until you’re able to touch it without it being too hot for you.
- Take some of your stuffing that you cooked and stuff your zucchini halves. You can use a spoon or your hands, whichever is easier. Don’t worry if you have a lot of stuffing left over because you’re going to use it.
- After you’ve stuffed all your zucchinis, place them in your oiled baking dish.
- Take whatever stuffing is left in the pan and transfer to the baking dish, placing it around the zucchinis. You can even put some on top of the zucchinis if you like.
- Bake it covered for about 20 to 30 minutes or so. It all depends on how soft/firm you like your zucchini. If you’re cooking with regular rice instead of quick-cooking rice, you need to make sure the rice has time to cook. Thirty minutes should be enough time, but you can easily taste it to see if it’s done.
- Serve piping hot from the oven.
Note:
This recipe is very flexible. If you have other vegetables in your refrigerator you want to use, feel free to add them. We would have loved to have put some peppers in our stuffing but we didn’t have any on-hand. If you prefer cashews or pine nuts instead of almonds, use what you prefer or have on-hand. If you don’t have any bread crumbs on-hand, you can always use mashed potato flakes or some oatmeal instead. You can also make your own bread crumbs by baking a couple slices of bread and crumbling it up. If you don’t like the idea of mixing sweet with salty, just skip the raisins. If you don’t have raisins on-hand but do have some dried figs, dried apricots, or dried prunes instead, try substituting with one of them. I’ll bet it’ll taste great!
