The Munchies Blog

Ingredients:

• 350 ish grams of Beef Mince
• 1 small Red Onion
• 2 cloves of Garlic
• ca 4 Peeled fresh tomatoes
• 50 ish grams of Feta
• 1/2 cup Cream
• 1 tablespoonish Tomato paste
• 2 Bay leaves
• 1 teaspoonish Strawberry jam
• 1 splosh White wine (Chardonnay?)
• Pasta

Approach:

Cook pasta.
Fry the mince together with onion and garlic. Add salt, tomatoes, tomato puree, a teaspoon strawberry jam and two bay leaves. Let simmer until it thickens a bit. Add wine and cream and let it cook longer.

Mix pasta and sauce in an ovenproof form and sprinkle feta on top. Chuck into oven and bake for around 20 minutes at around 225 degrees Celsius. The feta should look brownish.

One of my flatmates bought a big bag of courgettes (called zucchini in other parts of the world) the other day. I remembered that we’d once made really nice stuffed courgettes but I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere. It think the recipe below is close enough though.

This recipe takes a bit of time to prepare, but I think it’s well worth the effort. The amounts given were enough for 3 people for 1.5 meals.

Mince and Feta Stuffed Courgettes

• 8-9 smallish courgettes
• ca 300g beef mince
• 1 big onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• ca 3 handful rice (we used red rice, but brown or even plain long-grain rice should be fine)
• 200g feta
• 3 eggs
• ca 100-150ml milk
• ca 200g cheese (e.g. gouda or mild cheddar)

Boil the rice.

Pre-heat the oven to 180° C. Wash the courgettes, cut off the ends and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out most of the flesh, leaving a boat-shaped shell. Keep the flesh.

Chop the onion and garlic. Fry the onion, meat and garlic in a little bit of olive oil.

Cut the courgette flesh into small pieces and add to the meat. Fry for a few more minutes.

Cut the feta into very small pieces (or crumble with a fork). Grate the other cheese.

In a bowl, mix the meat mixture, drained rice, feta, an egg and some spices — we used salt, white pepper, smoked paprika and some rosemary. In a small bowl, whisk together the other two eggs, the milk and some more spices — in our case I think it was salt, white pepper, paprika and oregano.

Put the courgette halves into a shallow ovenproof dish, “open” side facing upwards. Spoon the meat/rice/feta-mixture into the courgette halves. Pour over the egg/milk-mixture so that some of it ends up in the dish itself and sprinkle the cheese over everything.

Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20-30 minutes. The temperature and times are for a conventional oven, you will have to adjust them for convection ovens. It’s done when the courgettes are soft enough to eat and the cheese has browned nicely.

I think next time we might use more rice and maybe also slightly more mince.