Stuffed Baked Zucchini with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

Recipe Submitted By: m5

4 good-sized zucchini (size to fit your roaster)
20 green onions (scallions)
10-15 roma tomatoes
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup white wine

Stuffing:
1.5 cups grated Romano cheese
1/2 lb blue cheese
handful of oregano and basil

Step 1:

Prep the zucchini stuffing:

Clean some oregano and some basil. Other herbs are possible: rosemary, marjoram, tarragon, parsley, chive, etc.

Step 2:

Grate about 1.5 cups of Romano cheese. Be careful with your Microplane grater.

Step 3:

Whirl the herbs by themselves in the processor, then add the Romano and the broken-up blue cheese.

Step 4:

Process until smooth, scraping down the bowl a couple times. Reserve.

Step 5:

Start the tomato sauce:

Get a big pot of water boiling. Add 2 tablespoons of salt. Drop in the tomatoes.

Step 6:

Remove after about 1 minute. The skins should be ready to come off.

Step 7:

Put the tomatoes through the food mill and transfer to your casserole dish (where the zucchini will eventually be roasted).

Pop that into a 275 degree oven; it can stay there for a while but you want at least to get the casserole dish hot and the tomato purree reduced a little.

Step 8:

While you've got the water hot, blanch 8 whole green onions and drain them.

Step 9:

Make the stuffed zucchini

First, chop up 10 or 12 green onions, including a good part of the greens. Chop 3 cloves of garlic too.

Step 10:

Remove the tomato purree from the oven, add the chopped scallion and some white wine, and season with a little salt (to taste).

Step 11:

Slice each zucchini in half length-wise. Slice them such that the halves lay flat; in other words, look along the length of the zucchini and find a place to slice where the squash is pretty straight.

Step 12:

Scoop out the seedy part such that there's a nice furrow in each half.

Step 13:

Sprinkle a little salt and black pepper over the cut faces of the zucchini, then sear the cut side in a hot heavy skillet. Keep track of the pairs!

Step 14:

When the cut side is well-browned, remove and fill the furrows with the reserved cheese mixture. (The photo makes the zucchini look more black than it really was.)

Step 15:

Reunite the halves and tie each squash with two reserved blanched scallions.

Step 16:

Lay the tied zucchini over the sauce. Return to a hot oven (400 degrees).

Step 17:

Roast for about 30 minutes, or until the tops of the squash look fairly browned.

Place a roast zucchini on a dinner plate, with a surround of tomato sauce.