ROW - Week 32 - Spicy Italian Zucchini Boats

Well....its Monday again which means time to eat up those veggies!!  Meatless Mondays continue!!! I have to be perfectly honestly though and say that this is a great recipe - but I am surprisingly missing my tofu!  Yes you read that correctly I miss my tofu!  In fact so much so that it is on the board for dinner tomorrow night!  YAY!

Anyhow, this looked somewhat complicated but it was rather easy - I did however make a few changes which I think will make life a little tastier!  

Are you ready??? Here we go!

Get that oven preheating so that when you are finally ready to put the boats in the hot tub it is all set!  It was probably not the best night here to have the oven going at 400 degrees as it was about as muggy as it gets!  But the only things that suffered were the pups as they had to look at my frizzy hair - it kinda looked a little like this....

I decided that I wanted to sauté the mushrooms before putting them in the boats so I got my pan nice an warm added some olive oil - not a ton just enough to coat the bottom and then added my shrooms!

Mushrooms have a lot of water in them to begin with so let them cook a bit of it off before adding any seasonings!  

Once they started to look like this I added a little garlic then diced up some red onion - this was also another addition I made, mainly because I scored some sweet farm fresh red onions this weekend at the Farmers Market and didn't want them to go to waste!  Once those two items were in the pan I started working on the zucchini boats!

Now the recipe makes it sound like you should just be able to run your spoon down the center of the zucchini and it will all come out pretty....ya that shit didn't happen!!  So here is what I did...I washed the dirt off of these bad boys as they too came from the Farmers Market and then laid them out on the cutting board...see all the other veggies trying to make their debut in the background!

Then I cut them in half lengthwise like the recipe said - that part was easy!  Then I decided to carefully make a some cuts in each side so that it was easier to get the "guts" of the zucchini out...

Step 1

Step 2 - use the spoon to get out the "guts"

The outcome

Once I pulled the guts out I added them to the sauté pan in order to soften it up just a touch

Then I added all of the spices - since I like to savor the flavor I used a teaspoon of both the oregano and basil and I thought that it was just perfect!  While that was getting warm I got my cookie tray ready - now again I know the recipe actually calls for this to be in a 13x9 and covered but since I have already sautéed off the veggies I put them on a cookie sheet and did not cover it because well....who wants mushy anything.  We have teeth for a reason!!!

 

I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to put the veggie mixture in the boats - doing a 1/4 cup at a time in each until they were full.  I had some leftover veggie mix so I will be using that with lunch tomorrow!  I only baked them for about 20 minutes and they were perfect.  The only problem that I had with two of them was well the "boat" ended up looking more like a surf board after it had cooked - they just were a little too small for this project!

I sprinkled the fresh basil on the top - I did not add any extra cheese at this point because well I think parmesan cheese smells like dirty feet so I really wasn't in to adding extra feet to my dinner! :)  Here is the final product!!!

Surprisingly filling - probably would be perfect if it had some ground beef or sausage in it!  But then that would take away from meatless Monday wouldn't it!

Here is the original post...

http://www.thecomfortofcooking.com/2012/08/spicy-italian-stuffed-zucchini-boats.html

Well I had to hang up my apron tonight and made an attempt to do some home repairs - needless to say it ended in a few things breaking because I had an epic hissy fit!  Guess my apron will always win over the tool belt!  Thats what Bernie is for - good thing he will be here on Thursday!  Now its time to clean up that mess!!

Happy Cookin'!