Taking zucchini boats to a whole new level
- R.
- Sep 11, 2015
- 3 min read
We're talking courgette submarines, baby!
My dad often grows courgettes and squash and whatnot in the garden, but this year we decided to actually dedicate a whole section of the garden to vegetables. We (read, my dad) dug over our own potager. We'd undertaken this task once before, way back when I was about 9, and had succesfully grown carrots and radishes and massive pumpkin(g)s, and more lettuce than Benjamin Rabbit could even dream of... but after that we cut back to tomatoes, wild strawberries, raspberries, chives, some herbs and then our apple trees (that give great juicing apples, not really edible apples). Wow, written like that it seems like a lot, I never really realised. Anyhow, this year we tried it again which was a lot of fun. And the courgettes - if you don't cut them quickly - just keep growing into these massive beasts! (We even had one that turned orange and looked like a pumpkin it got so gargantuan!)
Now you know why this recipe is as it is. EMBRACE THE GIANT VEGETABLES (although, I wouldn't recomment letting them get too big, they start to be mainly water after a certain point. And if an averaged sized vegetable is 80-90% water, imagine an overgrown one...).
Watch the video on how to make them here: (or keep reading for written instructions)
Ingredients:
1 round courgette, or a couple of large normal ones, this one weighed 600g
1/2 red onion, that's about 45g
50g of red bell pepper
1/2 tsp of olive oil
1tsp of garlic powder
1/2 tsp of celery salt
1/2 tsp of paprika
A pinch of salt
45g of tomato purée
125g minced beef
45g (or 1/3 of a cup) red lentils
120g baby button mushrooms
20g of sweet corn
And 20g of a cheese that melts well, I used some Vieux Liège
How to:
1. You’re going to start by preparing your courgette, turning it into a bowl. So go ahead and pretend it’s Halloween and carve your courgette. Cut out a little lid (or hat) from the top, being careful not to slip and cut yourself. Use the back of a spoon to force the lid out to prevent any unfortunate accidents from happening. Then hollow it out with an ice cream scoop. You can use a regular spoon too, but the ice cream scoop is easier - and in my opinion more fun. Make sure not to get too close to the skin, so try and leave at least 0.5 a cm wall and 1cm at the bottom. Once you’ve completed that task, chop up the courgette innards into smaller chunks.
2. Prepare your red onion by peeling and dicing it.
3. Chop the red pepper into small pieces too.
4. Heat up the olive oil in a frying pan, and add the garlic powder. Then throw in the red onion, and add a dash of water. Add the celery salt, the paprika, the table (or Himalayan) salt and stir together. Finally add the tomato purée.
5. Once those ingredients are all well combined and have formed a thick sauce, you can add in the minced beef. Stir the ingredients to break the mince up.
6. Once the meat starts to brown, you can add in the courgette chunks.
7.Then add the red lentils. You’ll need to add about ¼ cup of water with the lentils so they can absorbs the moisture and soften.
8. Once all the added water has been absorbed and the lentils have soften slightly, add the red bell pepper, the mushrooms and the sweet corn. Stir together so all the flavours can mingle.
9. Now you can spoon about half of the mixture back into your carved courgette that you prepared earlier. You can either save the other half for later, continue cooking it in the frying pan or spread it into a dish. Then place the lot in an oven that has been preheated to 150°C for about 20 minutes.
10. Whilst that’s cooking you can grate your cheese so it’s ready to be sprinkled on top of the courgette.
11. Be careful when handling the courgette bowl as it comes out of the oven, it’ll not only be hot and heavy but the courgette container will have softened in the oven. It still holds it’s shape but you just have to be a little careful. Also beware of some sauce dripping out the bottoms because that’ll be hot too.
Nutritional values:
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