Photos of Zucchine Ripiene – Stuffed Courgettes by Mario
Stuffed Courgettes are part of, as I like to call it, family of recipes. I use this term to describe recipes that exist in different cuisines, but the general idea of the cooking method and style of the dish are very similar to each other.
Obviously, depending on the origin of the recipe, stuffed vegetable dishes go by different names. Just to give you and example, we have shared with you one of our recipes for stuffed vegetable before – GEMISTA, which was a Greek-style dish, in this case a stuffed pepper.
ZUCCHINE RIPIENE – Stuffed Courgettes
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Total time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Serves 2
Recipe by Tom
INGREDIENTS
- 2 medium size courgettes (cut in half lengthways, deseeded – see notes)
- 40 g red or white onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, finely grated
- 2 spring onions, finely chopped
- 60 g mix peppers, cut into half a centimeter squares
- 200 g pork mince meat
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 40 g long grain rice
- 250 ml chicken stock
- 200 ml Our Tomato Sauce
- 20 g grated Parmesan + more for topping
- 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Sea salt
- Freshly cracked black pepper
- Olive oil and fresh basil for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS
- Boil a couple of litres of water and blanch courgettes for 3 – 5 minutes, just to soften them up, then set aside on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
- In a hot pan, fry onion, garlic and spring onion with olive oil, just for 2 – 3 minutes or until golden brown.
- Add mix peppers, cook for 2 minutes, then add pork mince and oregano and cook for 4 – 5 minutes.
- Add rice and stock, cook for 10 – 15 minutes (until all the liquid is absorbed), then add Our Tomato Sauce, season with salt and pepper and cook for 2 more minutes to combine all the ingredients together.
- Take the pan off of the heat.
- Throw 20 g of Parmesan and breadcrumbs into the filling, give it a stir, check the seasoning, then fill the courgette halves equally.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven, 180 degrees Celsius, for 15 – 20 min until nice and soft, then sprinkle Parmesan on top (as much as you like!) and bake for further 5 minutes.
- Take the Stuffed Courgettes out of the oven, transfer onto a serving platter, drizzle with olive oil, garnish with fresh basil and dig in!
NOTES
- Deseeding: If the flesh with seeds is soft enough, you can chop it up and add to the filling along with the peppers (you might need to cook it for a bit longer than 2 minutes to cook off excess liquid released from the flesh, before adding pork mince), but if the seeds are hard, then don’t use it.
- You can top Stuffed Courgettes with a different cheese, such as Mozzarella.
- If you like your food quite spicy, just add some fresh or dried chillies into the filling, or some spices, such as Cayenne pepper or Cajun spice.
- These Stuffed Courgettes can be enjoyed as your dinner or perhaps as a party food, when cut it into small portions.
- This dish can be Gluten Free, just don’t add any breadcrumbs.
