Warm-weather produce is finally getting into high gear. This week’s Greenmarket had plenty of strawberries (jam-making soon!), sugar snap, snow, and shell peas – and the very first zucchini. They come from a farm in southern New Jersey and are blessedly unlike the far-traveled, long-picked, grocery-store zucchini we’ve had to make do with for so many months.
Long-time New Yorkers may remember the days when stores labeled their best produce “Jersey fresh.” Whether it was corn or tomatoes or eggs, the soi-disant Garden State was thought to grow the best of it, and the taste of this batch of zucchini suggests that may still be so.
I decided to honor my sweet new summer squashes with an elegant presentation: the Baked Stuffed Zucchini Boats recipe from Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cookbook. It’s a lovely recipe, one that I’ve adopted in spirit for many years, but that I hadn’t followed precisely for nearly as long. It was time to revisit the source.
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My four zucchini were larger than the size called for, but perfectly fresh, firm, and tender. I snipped off their ends, halved them lengthwise, and carved out the centers with care, saving the pulp.
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I parboiled them in salted water until just beginning to soften. Actually, this part of my preparation was not quite faithful to the recipe. Marcella has you cut the zucchini into 2½-inch logs, hollow them out from end to end, leaving ¼-inch walls all around, and boil them that way, not cutting them in halves until much later. My way is easier, and it lets me dig out longer boats with less danger of piercing their hulls. I think it makes a more attractive presentation, with no difference in the flavor of the resulting dish.
The next steps were to make a cup of béchamel sauce and sauté a mince of onion, ham, and half the zucchini pulp.
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I did that, though my zucchini pulp utterly refused to turn the “mellow golden color” that Marcella predicted. No matter – it softened and turned creamy, as it should. Then I stirred together the minced mixture, about two-thirds of the béchamel, a raw egg, and a few tablespoons of grated parmigiano. I gave Beloved Spouse the fun of grating in a big dash of nutmeg – a spice that he adores.
That was the stuffing for the boats, so after aligning them in a buttered baking dish I spooned in the stuffing, sprinkled on breadcumbs, and dotted with butter.
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The dish went into a 400° oven, in principle for about 20 minutes, but mine took closer to 40 before it developed the required light golden crust. Perhaps because the zucchini were bigger?
(All those smudges around the sides of the dish are due to my overenthusiastic buttering. No food stylists around to pretty it up!)
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This was very fine food: richly creamy, but quite delicate and light on the palate. The zucchini flesh and the stuffing blended together beautifully, almost melting in the mouth. And the gentle flavors were subtly perfumed by the nutmeg; Beloved Spouse really liked that.
I made stuffed zucchini recently. Not nearly as artful as yours with the carefully carved hollows and the beautiful browned tops.
Most of the artfulness is due to Marcella, but thank you anyway!