Green Thumb Geeks

Recipe: Jalapeno Poppers

2010-09-03T05:48:59Z

As we might have said in a previous post, we grew an overly abundant amount of peppers this summer. The most fruitful was a spicy jalapeno variety called Jalafuego from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, which we expect to grow again next year. Not realizing how prolific these plants would be in the incredible heat this summer, we ended up with dozens of large jalapenos ripening at the same time. There’s only so many Mexican dishes I can make at once, and only so many jalapenos that can go in each dish! So I decided to recreate a favorite snack from my childhood (though I used to have to go to Arby’s to get my fix): jalapeno poppers.

Jalapeno poppers are a wonderful appetizer, though honestly I would make an entire dinner out of these if they were any healthier! We made these for a dinner party, and they were a big hit. We subsequently made another batch and froze them for later consumption – I’m expecting they will be just as delicious warmed again in the oven on a cold day this winter. :) I can imagine the idea of making these poppers could be intimidating – I did not make them for the longest time because I assumed it would be a complicated process – but I promise it is actually quite simple to make these, and very rewarding.

Ingredients

20 large or 25 medium size jalapenos

1 8-oz. package cream cheese, softened to room temperature

1 cup shredded sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese

1/4 cup sour cream

1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped

2 eggs, beaten

1 Tbsp. milk

1 1/2 cups fine bread crumbs

Directions

The jalapenos are stuffed with a cream cheese mixture before breadcrumbs are applied

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a medium baking sheet with PAM.

For handling the jalapenos, I highly recommend wearing latex gloves of some sort, since otherwise your hands will be on fire for hours! Because we are cutting hot peppers often, I keep on hand a box of disposable medical gloves purchased from our local pharmacy. A single box has a hundred pairs in it, so I never run into an issue where I’m trying to cook and have no protection

Chop the tops off first, then using a potato peeler or a fruit corer such as this oneremove and discard the seeds. I usually shake the peppers upside down afterward to be sure all the seeds have been cleared out. As an alternative (and I did this the second time I made this recipe, but not when I took pictures), you can also slice the jalapenos in half lengthwise, then de-seed. It certainly makes de-seeding easier, but it is a little bit more difficult to coat with breadcrumbs, which we do in one of the upcoming steps.

: Ready to cook!

In a medium bowl, mix together the cream cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and parsley. Place the cream cheese mixture in a Ziploc bag, then snip off one corner of the baggie with scissors. Squeeze mixture out of the bag to stuff the jalapenos (or jalapeno halves, if you went that route).

Whisk together eggs and milk in a small bowl. Put your breadcrumbs in a second small bowl.

Dip each stuffed jalapeno (or jalapeno half) into the egg and milk mixture, then roll in breadcrumbs to coat. Arrange in a single layer on your baking sheet.

Bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and lightly browned.

Makes a wonderful amount of ooey gooey appetizers everybody will love! We served with extra chilled cream cheese filling on the side that did not fit in our jalapenos; this provided a nice contrast to the spiciness of the poppers. You can also provide marinara sauce or a honey mustard sauce on the side for dipping.

Our "Sweet and Spicy Peppers" entry for Summer Fest 2010. Click the image to see what Summer Fest is all about!

Recipe: Grilled Peaches with Brown Sugar over Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

2010-08-20T15:27:16Z

We’ve been very ambitious these past two years with the number of vegetables we grow. But when it comes to fruits, we have just two apple trees, and you can count the tomatoes if you ignore the pesky Supreme Court ruling declaring them vegetables. Maybe in future years we’ll grow more fruit varieties, but for now we rely on the supermarket, farmer’s markets, and picking at local farms. And in August, our favorite picking fruit is the yellow peach.

Halved, pitted, skinned, and glazed

I know what you’re thinking. What are we doing picking peaches in upstate New York? It’s not Georgia, after all. From growing up in Central New Jersey and picking great peaches there, I figured it’s worth trying here since we’re only two hours north. So this past weekend when we found an ad saying Fishkill Farms had a bumper crop, we showed up and picked a peck of yellow peaches, and they were delicious!

Emily has already demonstrated her skills with delectable treats like peach ice cream, peach-mango salsa, and peach cobbler (recipes will be up here some day). So this time I thought I’d try my hand at something, and decided on grilled peaches. Grilled fruit sounds strange at first, but it makes perfect sense. The sugars quickly caramelize over the hot flames, adding a nice smoky flavor on top of the sweet and sour of the raw fruit. The grill also brings out some of the bitterness of the peach, which we cut down with some sweet, creamy vanilla bean ice cream. The result is the perfect summer dessert.

Our "Stone Fruit" entry for Summer Fest 2010. Click the image to see what Summer Fest is all about!

Ingredients

4 ripe yellow peaches
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp light brown sugar
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup vanilla bean ice cream (we like Haagen Dazs five and Breyers)
Salt to taste

Directions

Place the butter in a bowl, and microwave for 30 seconds or until melted. Add cinnamon and brown sugar, and stir to combine.

Right after grilling

Cut the peaches in half vertically, removing the pits and skins. The skins should fall off if it’s ripe enough, otherwise use a knife. Drizzle the butter, sugar, and cinnamon glaze on top of the peach halves, making sure to cover the full surface of all the pieces. Sprinkle salt on each piece to taste.

Heat up the gas or charcoal grill to high. Spray the grill surface with oil, then put the peach halves on the grill. Wait 5 minutes or until you see grill marks on the undersides of the peaches, and flip them over. Then grill for another 5 minutes and remove from grill.

Cut the peach halves in half for easy forking. In a bowl, combine ice cream and peaches, and serve immediately while peaches are still warm and ice cream hasn’t yet melted.

This recipe serves dessert for 2.

Recipe: Tomato and Mozzarella Paninis with Basil Pesto

2010-08-18T13:38:22Z

Paninis are extremely easy to make with an indoor grill/panini maker, and extremely delicious. I have a Cuisinart Griddler and love it for this purpose. Sometimes, nothing beats a panini. Especially one with homemade pesto, homegrown tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella.

For my pesto, I always rely on this wonderful recipe by Simply Recipes. It is incredibly easy, but absolutely delicious. My take on making pesto is replicated below.

Ingredients

For the pesto

1 c. fresh basil leaves, packed

Our "herbs, beans, and greens" entry for Summer Fest 2010. Click the image to see what Summer Fest is all about!

1/4 c. freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Romano cheese

1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

1/6 c. pine nuts or walnuts

1 Tbsp. garlic, minced

salt and pepper to taste

For the panini

1 serving pesto (above)

2 ciabatta rolls

1 large tomato, sliced 1/4 inches thick

1 small or half of a large ball of fresh mozzarella, sliced into 1/4th inch thick wedges

10-12 basil leaves

pinch of salt (for tomato slices)

Directions

For the pesto

Combine all ingredients but olive oil and parmesan cheese in a food processor. Pulse several times to combine, then while food processor is running, drizzle in olive oil. Continue to process until mixture is to your desired consistency.

I generally add in the parmesan cheese last because I do not always eat all of the pesto I create at once. For any extra, it is very easy to freeze if you just leave the parmesan cheese out; then when you wish to eat it later, just defrost and add the parmesan cheese and it is ready to use right away. This has been very helpful for me when I have a lot of basil ready to harvest at the same time – plus we get to enjoy essentially fresh pesto all year round. In case you are interested in trying to freeze pesto, we’ve found that single-serving half-cup GladWare containers work great for holding the perfect amount of pesto for a meal for two.

For any pesto you intend to use immediately, add parmesan cheese at this time to the food processor, and again pulse a few times until well blended.

For the panini

Heat up your griddler, or other panini-making appliance, to medium-high heat.

Slice the ciabatta rolls in half lengthwise. Spread pesto on one side. On the other, layer mozzarella, then tomato slices. Sprinkle with salt. Top the tomato slices with the basil leaves. I know my picture at the left does not reflect this order, but given my experience, I recommend keeping the tomato slices in the middle to minimize the juices from soaking into the ciabatta bread… otherwise it does have a tendency to get a little soggy while eating.

Spray panini-maker with PAM, then cook each panini one at a time until the cheese just starts to melt and the top of the ciabatta roll starts to brown. Serve immediately.

Freezing the Harvest

2010-08-10T02:56:40Z

Tomato prepped for blanching

A common question I’ve heard in recent weeks is, “How do you keep up with all the food you’re harvesting?” It’s a very good question considering that it’s just the two of us, and we have a little over 1,000 square feet of garden, with about half of it cultivated quite densely. With the exceptional weather this year, the harvest has exceeded even our most optimistic predictions.

For short-term storage, Emily made a bunch of jars of her now-famous Bread and Butter Pickles, which keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks without problem. But for long term storage, our first line of defense is the freezer. Last summer, we snatched up a used waist-high freezer on Craigslist, hoping that one day we’d have so much harvest that we would save food and enjoy it during the other 3 seasons. Well that day has come, especially since we were getting 10 squash daily at one point in July and are now averaging about 15 ripe tomatoes per day.

Zucchini and zephyr squash in FoodSaver bags

For both of these vegetables, it is important to blanch them before freezing, which means boiling them for a short time and then soaking in ice water. The benefits of blanching are twofold: first, it kills the ripening enzyemes, resulting in fresher food when you later thaw and use the vegetables. Also, in the case of tomatoes it’s the easiest way to skin them.

First, set a pot of water to boil and fill a big bowl with water and ice. Remove the stem scar of the tomato, then cut a very shallow X into the top and continue cutting until you’ve made 2 intersecting perpendicular rings (see top image). Drop the tomatoes into the boiling water for 1 minute, then into the ice water for 1 minute. When you take the tomatoes out of the ice water, the skins will slide right off, due to the thin cuts from earlier. Finally, quarter the tomatoes (optional space-saving measure) and pack them into quart-size yogurt containers. This whole process can be quite painless if you have 2 people working in an assembly-line fashion, with one in charge of washing and preparing tomatoes for blanching and the other removing skins, quartering, and packing. Once you get going, you can fill a container (about 4 full-sized tomatoes) every 3 minutes or so.

Tomatoes, after freezing for a day

For zucchini and summer squash, Emily typically cuts them up into the size that she’d plan to use them in recipes (e.g. slices, cubes, halves), then blanches for 3 minutes, and stores in freezer bags. This is where our our FoodSaver comes in handy. A good friend recommended this kitchen gadget to us a few years ago, and I was skeptical at first. But now I think it’s one of the best things we’ve bought for our kitchen. It basically allows you to suction the air out of a freezer bag and then seals the top, allowing you to preserve everything fresher, longer. It’s a cinch to use and doesn’t take up much space.

Peppers are another good candidate for freezing. Emily made a few trays of jalapeno poppers and froze them for a future dinner. As for the remaining peppers, she washed and packed them into zip-lock freezer bags whole, and stored them in the freezer for use in future recipes.

As of today, we have 15 quart-sized containers of tomatoes and 20 FoodSaver freezer bags of zucchini and summer squash. Now we can look forward to winter. When all the tomatoes in the grocery store taste like cardboard, we can grab a quart of frozen garden tomatoes and make a delicious salsa, tomato sauce, or chili from our own harvest. I can’t wait.

Some very useful links if you have further questions about freezing:

“Quality For Keeps: Freezing Vegetables” University of Missouri Extension - Contains blanching times for just about every type of vegetable that you might freeze for long-term storage.

“Frequently Asked Freezing Questions” National Center for Home Food Preservation – An excellent FAQ that will answer all your questions about freezing fresh food.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, in which we try our hand at canning!

Recipe: Cucumber, Tomato, and Red Onion Salad

2010-08-02T01:34:07Z

Sometimes you just want something quick, simple, and light to eat during the hot summer days. The following salad, comprised of cucumbers, tomatoes, and red onions tossed with a homemade vinaigrette, really hits the spot. It’s also the perfect salad to bring along to a barbecue when you don’t have a lot of time to cook, and a great way to make use of tomatoes and/or cucumbers you might be collecting right now from your garden.

You can make as much or as little of this recipe as you like. The amount I list below is enough for about 8-10 people as an appetizer. It keeps for several days in the fridge, but is best the first day.

White balsamic vinegar, for those unfamiliar with it, is made with white wine vinegar and grape must (fresh pressed juice with seeds and skins). It should be commonly available in most grocery stores. It has the same nice tang to it that regular balsamic vinegar does, but I think it has a less sour aftertaste and makes this dish look a little more aesthetically pleasing than if we were to use its darker counterpart. However, in the event you can’t find white balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar can be substituted in its place, or if you don’t care about the look, regular balsamic is also a fine alternative.

Our first Summer Fest entry, for "Cukes 'n Zukes" week. Click the image to see what Summer Fest is all about!

Ingredients

3 medium cucumbers

4-5 medium tomatoes

1/2 of a large red onion

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar

1/4 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. garlic pepper (or just pepper)

Directions

Slice cucumbers, tomatoes, and red onion into bite-size pieces, which will differ depending on the exact size of your vegetables. They can be put into any type of large container but something long and shallow works best for optimal exposure to the vinaigrette.

In a small bowl, add the remaining ingredients and stir well. Immediately pour over the cucumber, tomato, and red onions. I use my hands to mix everything together, since I think that works best, but otherwise use a couple large utensils. Cover with saran wrap and refrigerate for a suggested minimum two hours before serving so the vegetables have some time to marinate.

Serve cold. As mentioned above, it’s best the same day, but we’ve tried ours several days later and it’s still quite good.

This amount serves 8-10 as an appetizer.

Be sure to use fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from your garden if you can for the best taste!

Recipe: Cheddar-stuffed Jalapeno Burger

2010-08-02T20:45:19Z

Replete with Emily's homemade bread and butter pickles using our garden cucumbers

Certain tastes, smells, and sounds are inextricably linked in my mind with a specific time or a place. For instance, fresh-cut grass smell in the air signals that spring has arrived. And when I take a bite of a cheeseburger hot off the grill, I know that summer is here. In a pinch, you can use the store-bought variety (Bubba Burger is pretty good), but this is one area where homemade is significantly better than anything in the frozen section.

This recipe is adapted from the burgers my parents make at our family barbecues, and I fully encourage modifying it to suit your tastes. We happen to very much enjoy onions, garlic, cheese, and heat, so they feature prominently here. Also, we used jalapenos because we have an ample fresh supply from our garden, but you can pick your favorite pepper to suit your tastes. The basic approach to this recipe is to embed the major ingredients inside the meat, instead of adding them as toppings. The reason for this is twofold. First, this way the onions, garlic, and peppers all get grilled, which enhances their flavors compared to their raw versions. Second, they impart flavor into the beef during the cooking process. The cheese in the middle gives the burger a gooey center, but you need to carefully follow the cooking instructions or you risk the burger falling apart on the grill because it’s not as hard and compact as the frozen store-bought variety.

Ingredients

Before adding the second patty to seal in the cheese

2 lbs. ground beef, 80% lean or thereabouts
1 large yellow onion, chopped fine
2 large jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced fine
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
4 Tbsp minced garlic
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
2 Tbsp your favorite barbecue sauce (ours is Rudy’s from Texas)
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

Combine all the ingredients except the cheese into a big bowl, and mix thoroughly with your hands to combine. For each burger, first make two thin patties (about 1/8 lb each). Add about 2 teaspoons of shredded cheese on one patty in a small pile in the center. Then place the second patty on top of the first, sealing the cheese into the center. With your hands, shape the burger into a clean circle, and lightly press down on the center before putting it on the grill. The reason for this last step is that the grilling process tends to redistribute the outside meat into the center, so you can counteract it by creating a dimple in the middle and giving the burger a slightly wider diameter before cooking.

The fully assembled burger, pre-grill

When grilling a homemade burger, first spray or brush the grill surface with oil to prevent sticking. Then, pre-heat the grill to medium-high, and place the patties on the grill. It is very important to not flip or adjust it until the bottom has cooked, or you risk it falling apart. On my Weber Spirit gas grill, I typically grill for 7 minutes, then flip it over and cook the other side for 7 minutes as well. You may be used to cooking only 5 minutes or less per side, but these take longer because they are quarter-pound burgers, and quite juicy. Do not pat the burger when it is on the grill, as this only forces out the very juices you are trying to seal in. If you require additional cheese, you can put a slice on top for the final 30 seconds. You can also toast the bun on the grill’s warming rack just before serving the burger for a restaurant-style presentation. And if you want to really impress your guests, follow Emily’s recipe for Bread and Butter Pickles and add those too.

Makes 8 quarter-pound burgers

Substitutions

You can use leaner or fattier ground beef, but be warned that the leaner it is, the drier the burger
If you prefer a more pungent cheesy center, you can opt for gorgonzola or any other blue cheese.
You might substitute Vidalia onions or shallots for yellow onions for some sweetness, but I haven’t tried that.

Recipe: Bread and Butter Pickles

2010-07-28T02:31:28Z

Now that the cucumbers have started coming for us, they just will not stop! We have planted two types of cucumbers. Two of our cucumber plants are of the variety Marketmore, which are a longer slender cucumber, but all of the others are a type called Alibi, which are ideal for both fresh eating and pickling. With cucumbers coming out of our ears, I decided to try making my very own pickles. I wasn’t ready to do any sort of serious canning just yet, but I found a recipe which said I could make my own pickles and as long as they stayed refrigerated, they’d remain fresh for a few weeks.

My favorite type of pickle is the bread and butter pickle. If our cucumber supply keeps producing as it has the past few weeks, I will probably try my hand at dill pickles or half sours soon, since these bread and butter pickles I made turned out quite fabulous.

Salted Cucumbers Sitting in an Ice Bath

They were much easier to make than I had anticipated, and because the cucumbers we’re using are so fresh, they have a wonderful crunchiness to them that you miss out on with store-bought pickles. The recipe below, based on this original recipe from Smitten Kitchen’s food blog, is enough to make just a single quart jar of bread and butter pickles (about 4 cups), but I easily scaled it to four times that amount and it was still not difficult. I highly recommend giving this a try if you find yourself swimming in pickling cucumbers!

Ingredients

1 lb. pickling or kirby cucumbers, sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 large or 2 small Vidalia (sweet) onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup Diamond kosher salt*
1/2 cup sugar (3/4 cup if you like your pickles very sweet)
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/4 tsp. ground turmeric
1 Tbsp. mustard seeds
1 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1/4 tsp. celery seed

Pickles - Post-simmer, pre-jarring

Directions

Combine the cucumbers, onions and salt in a bowl (small or medium for this exact recipe; I used two large bowls to make 4 quarts of pickles) and mix well. Cover the mixture with ice and let stand at room temperature for two hours.

In a large pot, bring sugar, vinegar and spices to a boil.

Drain the cucumbers and onions; then add these to the vinegar mixture and bring almost back to a boil. Then remove from heat and cool. Add to jars once close to room temperature.

You can store the pickles in any airtight container for up to three weeks in the fridge. I used Mason jars, but any old glass jars or even plastic containers would work fine for this.

The Mason jars worked especially well to keep air out and prolong the amount of time the pickles stayed crunchy, so that is what I would recommend. The mixture will begin tasting pickled in just a couple hours and taste delicious for days. Enjoy!

Sweet and Crunchy and Just Right

* The type of kosher salt being used is important here. This is one application where it makes a big difference which kosher salt you are using, since Morton and Diamond salts (the two varieties you will find on store shelves) are made in very different ways. Hence, your dish will taste much more salty if you use one variety versus the other. The original author of this recipe, Smitten Kitchen, explains the disparity here. I stuck to using Diamond kosher salt, since that is what Smitten Kitchen used. You can use Morton kosher salt, but you must convert it as instructed… or don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Woo hoo! 4th of July Tomatoes!

2010-07-06T11:05:28Z

(the photo above was inspired in part by this TV commercial)

If I had to pick a single reason to justify all the planning, pruning, weeding, staking, fence-and-trellis-building, tilling, watering, worrying, and blogging (well, I guess the last one isn’t required) that goes into gardening, I could sum it up in a single word: tomatoes. That’s it. If you’ve read our first post, you know that both Emily and I have an irrational attachment to fresh garden tomatoes. And if you are a gardener yourself, especially at our latitude, you know that the benchmark of a good tomato crop is the 4th of July tomato harvest.

Considering the atrocious wet June weather we had last year, we set our expectations very low this year. Yet just before we got into the car to drive to a friend’s wedding on Sunday the 4th (congrats, Snehal and Krupa!), we took a quick look at the garden and found our first two fully ripe Sun Gold cherry tomatoes of the year! This is by far the best-tasting cherry tomato variety we’ve had, and it is immensely productive and popular in most tomato-growing climates (source: Mother Earth News). As expected, the two fine specimens pictured were bursting with juice and intensely sweet.

Were you also blessed with 4th of July tomatoes? If so, congratulations! If not, remember that good things come to those who wait!

Recipe: Grilled Zucchini or Summer Squash

2010-07-04T00:31:14Z

There's no such thing as too much squash

We’re literally swimming in squash right now. Not literally in the sense of the dictionary definition, but literally in the very wrong way that people tend to overuse this word. As of July 1st, we had already harvested 24 full-sized squashes, with plenty more on the way. A few days ago, Emily posted a delicious mushroom ricotta stuffed squash recipe, so check that out if you haven’t yet. Today I wanted to share a simple yet tasty way to marinate and grill your squash.

Ingredients

Sliced and brushed with olive oil

2 zucchini or summer squashes

1/4 cup olive oil

Montreal steak seasoning

Italian seasoning

Garlic powder

Cayenne pepper

Fresh ground black pepper

Kosher salt optional

Directions

Pre-heat your grill to medium-high. Remove the tips of the squash, slice into 1/4” thick pieces lengthwise*, and lay them out on a baking sheet. Brush both sides of each piece with olive oil. Using your hand, lightly sprinkle the spices onto both sides of the squash pieces, with equal parts steak seasoning, Italian seasoning and garlic powder. Apply the cayenne pepper and salt very lightly because either of them can quickly overpower the dish (also, there is already some salt in the steak seasoning).

Fully marinated, on the grill

Using tongs, place each piece gently on the grill. You can orient them at a 45-degree angle for fancier grill marks. After about 3-4 minutes, flip over each piece in the same order that they were placed on the grill. Grill the other side for 3-4 minutes as well. Remove from the grill when they are floppy but not falling apart. Let rest for a few minutes to cool down before serving.

This preparation is quite versatile. You could lay a few strips of grilled squash on top of a salad to add some substance. Alternatively, you can roll them up and stick a toothpick through the pieces, and serve as appetizers. We haven’t tried, but they would also probably taste great as an addition to your favorite lunch sandwiches. They easily keep in the fridge for 3 days, so feel free to double or triple the recipe as needed.

Serves 2 as an entrée, or up to 6 when used as a topping or as an appetizer.

*We actually tried to use our mandoline for slicing the squashes one time, but its “thick” setting was still too thin and the spice-to-squash ratio came out all wrong. So we just slice them by hand now, trying to achieve approximately 1/4”.

Grilled squash makes a great salad topper. Also, don't add too much spice or you won't be able to taste the squash and it will look like this picture (we were still experimenting).

Recipe: Portobello Mushroom and Ricotta Stuffed Squash

2010-07-01T15:53:34Z

We are very excited to have reached the part of the growing season where squash start to appear in abundance. And abundance there is this year. So far, it has been an amazing growing season. We can only compare it to last year, which was terrible in comparison – last year our June was the rainiest on record, while this one has had near-perfect weather for growing summer crops.

That being said, we might have planted a tad too many plants, given the abundance of veggies it looks like we’re in for this summer. But nobody said we didn’t like a challenge! We are going to try to eat our way through as much squash that comes our way, and give away whatever extra we can’t manage to fit in our stomachs.

Cool bi-colored Zephyr Squash are one star of this recipe

One of my favorite ways to prepare many vegetables is to stuff them. Squash, tomatoes, peppers, doesn’t matter – they all taste great stuffed. It is the easiest way to get your creative juices flowing and undoubtedly produce an excellent meal. You can create stuffing from just about anything and it will taste delicious. Growing up, my mom had a great stuffed zucchini dish she would make that is still one of my favorite preparations of squash; this recipe uses the same technique, but is completely different in terms of stuffing ingredients.

That being said, it’s no surprise the meal I prepared this year with the first squash from our garden was a stuffed squash recipe. The stuffing was actually inspired by a recent mushroom hunt Nas and I went on. We actually didn’t find too many mushrooms on the walk, though we had a great time, but we did walk away with two small russula that I believe to be of this variety (russula parvovirescens – though don’t quote me on that), which needed to somehow make it onto our dinner table. The same day we went on this mushroom walk, we also stopped by a couple of farmers markets. At the first, I saw portobello mushrooms and decided purchasing one would at least give my final dish a mushroom-y taste. At the second, I found some fresh ricotta cheese from Acorn Hill Farm… and knowing that I had a couple of zephyr squash to pick from our garden when we arrived back home, this recipe was born. The herbs that went into this dish are all from our garden as well. Hopefully next time I make this dish, it will include our own tomatoes and jalapenos as well! We loved this dish and will make this same sort of preparation again in the near future as more squash pop up in the garden.

The amounts below are for two squash, stuffed very generously, with still a little bit of leftover stuffing we ate on the side (it was great just by itself!). You’d probably need to add a little bit of everything to make enough for 3 squash or scale higher than that. You should also adjust spiciness to your preference – I added 2 jalapenos, because we tend to like our food with a bit of a kick, but for others that might be a bit much.

You will need a food processor to make this recipe as I did, but if you don’t you can always just chunk everything and make stuffing that way – the texture would just be less creamy.

Ingredients

2 squash, approx. 8 inches long

1 large or two small portobello mushroom caps, stem removed

1 c. ricotta (we used fresh whole-milk)

1/4 c. breadcrumbs (we used Italian flavored)

Squash is cut in half lengthwise, then pulp removed for stuffing

2 jalapenos, chopped

1 large tomato, juice and seeds removed, chopped

1 heaping Tbsp. garlic, chopped

4 sprigs of oregano (approx. 1 Tbsp.)

4 sprigs of parsley (approx. 1 Tbsp.)

4 sage leaves

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Bring a large pot of water to boil with a pinch of salt. Add squash and boil for about 6 minutes, then begin checking squash for doneness - you want the squash to be tender, easy to penetrate the skin, yet still firm.

Squash after stuffing is added

If left in the water too long, it will get floppy and not hold its “boat” shape later when stuffing is added. Pull squash out of water and lay on a flat surface where they can cool down a bit. Once warm but still cool enough to handle, slice squash lengthwise into two pieces. Use a spoon to scoop out the pulp. I usually place the pulp into a handful of paper towels and squeeze the pulp to remove excess juice, but you could do this any way you wish. Save the pulp for the next step. Lay the squash shells upside down on paper towels to allow any additional juice to drain.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Chop portobello cap(s) into rough pieces. Add pieces to food processor; add the squash pulp, ricotta, breadcrumbs, garlic, oregano, parsley, and sage and pulse until smooth. Transfer to large bowl.

Stuffing will look slightly browned when done

Chop up tomato and similar to the squash, squeeze out the excess juice. And tomato and jalapeno to the stuffing and stir to mix.

In a 9×9 baking dish, lay the squash shells skin side down. Fill the boats with the

mushroom and ricotta stuffing mixture – we are very generous with our boats, to the point where they’re almost overflowing, but you can put in as much as you’d like.

Bake 30-35 minutes until stuffing just starts to brown. Eat while still warm, although these hold their shape well and also make great leftovers.

Enjoy!

Done and Ready to Eat! Yummmmm!