I was inspired by Food Network's Mario Batali's recipe, found here. But since I didn't follow that recipe, I will not call it a review. How could I? What I made was different.
First off it took my a little over an hour and half with prep and baking, so this is not a quick fix dinner.
- 2 medium to large zucchini's--mine were straight from my garden. One was a bit large, since we hadn't seen it. The other was a bit small, but only about a day before we would normally pick, but a bunny had found it, so it was a trim and use today one.
- 4 links sausage--It's cheaper here to buy it in links than loose. Go figure. It equals around a pound of meat.
- Olive Oil
- Parsley
- Onion--I used a medium sized yellow
- Garlic
- 2 eggs
- 2 cans (14 oz each) diced tomatoes, drained
- bread crumbs
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Yes I know that seemed really high to me too.
- Wash your zucchinis, trim ends, and slice lengthwise in half. Making 4 long pieces, that in a way almost remind me of garlic bread. Yes I am weird, why do you ask?
- Using a spoon, scoop out the center of the zucchinis. Go for getting all the seed area out, and then a bit more, until it becomes more difficult. Do not scoop to the very edges. I scooped it into a bowl, keep it, you'll need it.
- Brown your sausage in a frying pan. When nicely brown, but before it hits caramelizing, remove from pan, onto a paper towel/napkin covered plate (to get rid of some of the grease. What is caramelizing? When you cook something in an oil or fat, and it starts to be that lovely brown, crispy, yummy tasting.
- While sausage is cooking, dice your onion, and garlic or be lazy and by diced garlic in a jar, it's almost as good, and much less work when you have kids under foot, and get your zucchini centers from bowl into small pieces. You can chop them, or honestly mine were nice and fresh and I just pulled it apart by hand.
- Using same frying pan, is there is enough oil from sausage left in it great, if not add a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Heat oil then add onion, garlic, and parsley. My house kills plants, so I rarely have fresh on hand, so I used dried, and put in about a small handful of it.
- Cook for about 2 minutes. Then add in zucchini. Cook till tender, and some of the water has boiled off, about 10 minutes on medium heat. Lastly add the sausage back in and let cook another 2 minutes.
- In a large bowl put in the drained tomatoes. Then add in the sausage mix. Stir, and then come back an read the directions for a minute, to give it a chance to cool slightly.
- Add your 2 eggs, salt, and pepper and stir in. The mixture can still be warm, but not so hot that the eggs cook on contact.
- Put your zucchini halves (or boats as my daughter called them) in a greased baking pan. Make sure the sides are taller then your zucchini. Salt and pepper your halves. Yes, that is doing salt and pepper twice. This is not a mistake or a repeat.
- Fill with the egg/sausage mixture. Will be heaping full. Top with bread crumbs. We don't buy bread crumbs, since we bake bread we know that sometimes it doesn't cook right, or we end up with more than we need, or we forget to cover the leftovers over night and it hardens. For this we just cut up, dry in the oven or toaster oven. And then pulverize in our blender. Put in gallon bag in freezer. Voila, bread crumbs when you need it.
- Cook for 30 minutes then check, if not crisping on top yet, put back in. Mine took about 40-45 minutes.
