Recipe: Stuffed Round Courgette

Last weekend I blogged about the beautiful produce I bought at the market, including locally grown vegetable beauties:

See that round green guy in the middle? That's an actual courgette. Today's post is the recipe I invented to stuff him, and and how I used the stuffing I had to spare.

Stuffed Round Courgette (for 1)

1 Round courgette
1 Tsp coconut oil
1/2 Tsp cumin seeds
1/2 Tsp chili flakes
1 Stick celery - finely chopped
1 Small carrot - finely chopped
1 Clove garlic - thinly sliced

1/2 400g tin of kidney beans - drained
1 Small handful of chopped walnuts 

• Preheat the oven to 180C
• Cut off the top of the courgette and scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon, saving the flesh in a bowl. I hollowed it out until the shell was just under a centimetre thick.
• Replace the top as a hat and place on a baking tray in the oven for about 30 minutes
• Make the filling by melting the coconut oil in a saucepan (medium heat) and adding the cumin and chili. Add the celery and carrot when the spices are fragrant. After about 5 minutes the vegetables will have softened and you can add in the garlic for another minute or two. Keep stirring the mixture.
• Roughly chop the courgette flesh (depending on how roughly it was scooped out) and add to the pan. It should add a lot of moisture and cook down quickly
• When the courgette has mostly broken down stir through the kidney beans so that the mixture is fully heated through. I found that I needed to add a little water to keep the mixture from becoming too dry.
• If you like, season at this point, and stir through half of the walnuts.
• Once the courgette has had its 30 minutes, take it out of the oven and get the grill heating up. 
• Remove the courgette hat and place the courgette, up-turned, on a few layers of kitchen towel to drain out some excess moisture for about 5 minutes.
• When the courgette has 'drained' fill it with as much of the mix as possible and top with the remaining walnuts.  Pop it under the grill to reheat and crisp up a little. I put the hat under the grill beside it, just for the hell of it.
• After a few minutes (or before it starts to singe) take it out and put the hat back on (the courgette).
• Serve up!

As I hinted, I had some mixture leftover. Keeping it in the pan I added a generous handful of baby spinach leaves and warmed it through until the spinach had wilted. The moisture from the spinach turned the leftover mixture quite sauce-y, and reminded me of creamed spinach!

All together, looking rather sparse in such a big dish....

My next mission is to figure out an inventive way to use my aubergine and yellow tomatoes. I would like to try making baba ganoush I think....and perhaps a pasta sauce will do the yellow tomatoes justice!

'Til then,

Hannah xx

P.S. Totally forgot to add that this recipe is being shared over at Healthy Vegan Fridays hosted by Shelby at Everyday Vegan Girl , Gabby at The Veggie Nook and Carrie at Carrie On Vegan. Be sure to check it out!