It was actually really pretty awesome.
Here's all the zucchini getting ready for all the dishes. I used the rings and one of the "boats" for the dinner, and the other "boat" got grated into cake.
I chopped up a shallot and threw that in a pan with some olive oil to get fragrant.
Then I added to that one pound of ground beef that I had in the freezer.
The beef was higher in fat than I usually get (this was leftover from some sliders we made for 4th of July) so I had to drain the fat off. The olive oil was completely unnecessary. It was a veritable cauldron of boiling fat in that pan. Yeah, that got drained off.
Anyway, to the drained meat I added a heap of fresh spinach (frozen would work too) and reduced the heat to medium low.
And some roasted red peppers from a jar went in the mix. I wanted the roasted kind, but I didn't want to have to roast them myself....
Next I threw in about a cup of leftover pizza sauce- any red sauce would do. This had some mushrooms in it.
This is my acknowledgement of salt & pepper. I always feel bad for the salt and pepper. I never photograph them. Poor unloved salt & pepper. But I do love you, salt & pepper!
And the garlic. I added a clove here. I wasn't going to, but after all the cooking and draining of the fat, I was afraid the shallots had lost most of their power.
Then I picked thyme and basil from my fabulous window garden and minced that in there. Scissors are GREAT for chopping herbs.
It all made a big gloopy deliciousness in a pan. I think this added to anything- pasta, lasagna, just eat it with a spoon; it would be delicious. In this case, it was getting stuffed into zucchini. (Note that the rings have foil around the base, necessary unless you want them swimming in a soup of juices when you take them out of the oven.
PS. I had a suspicion that the zucchini was a little tough since it was so incredibly huge. I was right. I pre-baked the zucchini without stuffing while the oven was pre-heating and then some. All in all it started in a cold oven that was heating to 325 and it was in there for 20 minutes. It only took about 7-8 minutes for the oven to heat up. I was glad that I pre-cooked the zucchini some. It could have cooked more, in fact.
What you don't see is the slices of Gouda cheese that went on top before baking (admittedly, I also added about a cup of grated Gouda to the mix of gloopy deliciousness, but if I did it again, I would leave out the grated cheese and only put it on the top- it was a touch too heavy for me). But it baked (along with the zucchini bread) at convection 325 (which is really 300F) for 20 minutes. And here's the final product (with cheese).
Yum!
