Middle Eastern Stuffed Squash

hollowed-out vegetables with meat and rice filling

1 hr prep + 1.25 hours cooking / 4 people

This is a classic Middle Eastern main dinner dish. It is prepared with a zucchini like vegetable known as tatuma squash, or often sold in super markets as Mexican squash or zucchini (see example picture in link). It has a lighter green color and is more bottle shaped than a zucchini. It is stuffed with a meat filling and served with bread.

created: Friday, April 27, 2007 (PST)

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Ingredients

- 10 small-medium tatuma squash
- 1 lb ground beef
- 3/4 cup calrose rice (shorter and more starchy than typical long-grain rice)
- 2 onions
- 1/3 cup pomegranate paste (looks like heavy syrup)
- 3-4 tbsp tomato paste
- garlic (3-4 cloves)
- dry mint leaves
- lemon juice
- 1 tsp sugar

cooking oil, salt

Directions

Squash preparation (to each):
1. Cut off narrow end
2. Wash and scrape lightly with serrated knife.
3. Core the inside of the squash into a bowl using a zucchini corer (see links). P.S. the cores can be used to make leb kousa (see links again).
4. Bathe the vegetable in salt water: in a bowl which can accomdate an entire squash, add two cups water with 2 tspn salt. Dip the squash into the water, letting it fill the hallowed out insides, and then dump the water back in the bowl. Do this several times. This is especially useful if you'd like to stop at this stage, and store the hollow vegetables for next-day use.

Meat filling preparation:
1. Place cleaned rice and 3/4 cup water in a sauce pan on medium heat. It should take about 8-10 minutes for the water to get absorbed. After this, set it aside and let it cool.
2. Dice one onion and sautee it in a little oil. Set it aside and let it cool.
3. In a large mixing bowl, add the raw ground meat, rice, the sauteed onion, 2 tspns salt, and the pomenagrate paste. Mix well with hands.

Stuffing of the vegetables:
Using your index finger, pack each squash to the bottom, but not too densely, with meat mixture, leaving 1/2" from the opening.

Cooking of the stuffed vegetables:
1. Sautee each squash very slightly in a frying pan or large pot.
2. Arrange the vegetables in a layered fashion in a large pot, and cover with water, and add garlic and salt to taste.
3. Bring this to a boil over medium-high heat, and then lower the heat to medium-low for about 45 minutes.
4. After it has been cooked, add lemon juice, crushed dry mint leaves, 1 tsp of sugar, the tomato paste, and the other onion sliced into wedges. (If you prefer your onions more cooked, you may add them immediately after boiling the water first).
5. Let this simmer over medium-low heat for another 15-20 minutes.

Optionally, you may add some more crushed dried mint leaves a few minutes before serving for a little more of a fresh smell.

Also optionally, you can add dried apricots to the cooking water in step (3) immediately above.