Elisabetta’s Quick & Easy Stuffed Zucchini Recipe, Le Zucchine Ripene Dell’Elisabetta

Stuffed Zucchini

Cooking is in large part a matter of looking into the fridge or pantry, tacking stock of what’s there, and deciding what to do next. When Elisabetta found several round zucchini and some link sausages she decided to stuff the zucchini…

• 8 round zucchini At the most 3 inches (5 cm) in diameter, with flat bottoms
• 2 link sausages (we had sweet Italian sausages)
• 2 eggs
• 2 slices white bread
• A small bunch of parsley, minced
• The leaves from a sprig of thyme, chopped
• 1/2 cup bouillon (canned will be fine)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 360 F (180 C).

Begin by cutting the tops off the zucchini, and then hollow them out using a small sharp-bladed fairly flexible knife. You’ll want the walls of the hollowed out zucchini to be about a half inch (3/4 cm) thick, and be careful not to puncture the zucchini at the base.

Trim away the stems from the zucchini tops and put the tops in a blender, together with the chopped zucchini flesh and the parsley and thyme. Whir several times; you want the zucchini to be chopped but not liquid.

Transfer the chopped zucchini to a bowl. Remove the casings from the sausages and add them to the bowl, together with the eggs and the slices of bread. Mix well, until you have a uniform paste, which will likely be fairly liquid. Season it to taste with salt and pepper.

Fill the zucchini with the filling, adding enough filling to each that the tops of the zucchini are nicely rounded. Set the zucchini in an ovenproof saucepot and sprinkle the bouillon around them.

Bake the zucchini for about 35 minutes, by which point the top of the filling will have colored nicely, then remove them from the oven and simmer them over the stove until the cooking liquid is much reduced; if the zucchini look to be overcooking carefully remove them to a bowl and quickly cook the drippings down over fairly high heat.

Put the zucchini on 4 warmed plates, spoon the drippings over them, and serve them with crusty bread and the vegetable of choice. We had tomatoes and a tossed salad, and it was very nice.

The wine? Red, and we had Benaco Bresciano, a red from the shores of Lake Garda.

Yield: 4 servings Elisabetta’s stuffed zucchini