About this recipe
A Mediterranean way of turning a glut of courgettes into a proper meal. The scooped-out flesh goes straight back into the filling so nothing is thrown away, and the rice cooks entirely inside the courgette.
Ingredients
- 1 large onionfinely chopped
- 180 g long-grain white rice
- 6 large courgetteshalved lengthways
- 0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1.5 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 lemon unwaxed lemonsjuice and zest
- 350 ml gluten-free vegetable stock
- 120 g feta cheesecrumbled
- 40 g pine nuts
- 15 g fresh flat-leaf parsleychopped
- 15 g fresh mintchopped
- 20 g fresh dillchopped
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 400 g tinned chopped tomatoes
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic clovescrushed
Method
- 1
Heat the oven to 180C fan. Run a teaspoon down the middle of each courgette half to hollow out a shallow trough, leaving a wall about 8mm thick. Chop the scooped-out flesh finely and keep it.
Go steady on the walls. Scoop too deep and the courgettes slump in the oven and lose all their filling into the tray.
- 2
Rub the hollowed courgettes inside and out with a tablespoon of the olive oil and a pinch of the salt, then lay them cut side up in a large roasting tin.
- 3
Warm 3 tablespoons of the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Cook the onion for 8 minutes until soft, then add the garlic and the chopped courgette flesh and cook for another five minutes until the moisture has gone.
- 4
Stir in the tomato puree and cook for a minute, then add the rice and turn it in the oil until every grain is glossy.
- 5
Take the pan off the heat. Stir in half the chopped tomatoes, the pine nuts, all the herbs, the lemon zest, the remaining salt and the pepper. The mixture should be thick, not soupy.
- 6