Stuffed Vegetables | David Lebovitz

Imagine having a variety of stuffed vegetables for dinner one night. For the longest time, we’ve been taking stuffed vegetables in small bites — as appetizer or finger food. It’s certainly outside my realm of imagination that an assortment of stuffed tomatoes, eggplants and zucchini could be the main attraction of a meal. And they are, when stuffed with a pound of ground meat, mixed in and sautéed with aromatics. I can’t tell which is the star of the dish: vegetables or the meat stuffing. Both are winners, to be fair.

My initial reaction to this Cook-the-Book-Fridays recipe is: Can I simplify the dish and stuff just one vegetable, instead of all three that David suggests? But how do you choose and which one? Summer is clearly the peak season for tomatoes, eggplants and zucchini. After some internal deliberations, I decided to stick with the recipe all the way, except using two of each vegetable. If you want something substantial for a meal, this three-vegetable combo makes sense. They go well together and several complementary flavors are certainly better than one. Moreover, prep work on these vegetables is no sweat. It’s easy to cut tomatoes, eggplants or zucchini in halves, small chunks and finally making them into “boats” by hollowing out the vegetables to form vessels for the stuffing.

On the other hand, the stuffing requires more work than prepping the vegetables. The onion, garlic, fresh herbs (sage, thyme and basil) and chile pepper have to be chopped and diced. The aromatics are cooked until soft and fragrant. Then add the vegetables trimmings. I like that nothing get wasted in the process of making the vegetable “boats.” Next going in the mix is the chile pepper and the meat (I used 80/20 ground beef). Sauté them in the pan briefly. Remove the pan from heat. Continue to build flavors with freshly squeezed lemon juice, some fresh basil and seasonings. After the stuffing cools, pulse the mixture a few times in the food processor, using an egg as binder, until just combined. Then fill the vegetables “boats” with the meat stuffing.

mise en place

The stuffed vegetables are now ready to go into a 350°F oven and bake for an hour. Cooking time is best reduced or add humidity in a steam oven setting.

The finishing touch is sprinkling grated parmesan cheese over the top of the stuffed vegetables shortly before they finish baking. It’s unlikely to find stuffed vegetables outside the home kitchen. But this is the area where home cooking shines. Any stuffed vegetables like these are nutritious and delicious. This could well be comfort food at its best. Here you also have a perfect opportunity to sneak in varieties of peak-season vegetables dressed in meat for a family meal.

My favorite is the stuffed tomatoes, among the three. For the eggplant, the skin is a bit on the tough side. A better option would be using the smaller Japanese eggplants, instead of the globe eggplants. I cut the zucchini into big as well as small chunks. It was fun holding the smaller stuffed zucchini in my fingers; they tasted yummy in one bite. unfortunately, the bigger pieces needed more time in the oven. They were a little crunchy and dry, not the texture you look for in roasted vegetables. For added moisture, use a casserole or cast-iron gratin dish to nestle all the stuffed vegetables in snugly.

One more tip for the leftover stuffing. I spread it on slices of firm tofu, which I always have around. Bake them at 300°F with 50% humidity in the convection steam oven for about 40 minutes. Garnished with some green onions, they were surprisingly good. Furthermore, tofu is an appropriate substitution for ground meat if you want to turn this into an all-vegetable dish.

This stuffed tofu is surprisingly delicious.