The Slapdash Cook

I love my slow cooker more than I love any other kitchen appliance. It allows me to put things on to roast or simmer and walk away for hours at a time, saing me the boredom of actually monitoring them. (If that sounds dangerous to you, remember that I usually work at home.) When I return, presto — browned onions, or marinara sauce, or roasted veggies or soup or oatmeal. Etc! Because it traps moisture, it can’t do everything, but it can do a LOT. If you work at home, or feel comfortable leaving it on low while you’re out of the house, I recommend buying one yesterday. It’s saved me hours of boredom from caramelizing onions alone.

I had already planned to make stuffed zucchini because a) I had a coupon for fake ground beef and b) summer squash is everywhere right now. Then I realized that the slow cooker would allow me to skip the most annoying part about stuffed squash — cooking the squash shells to a fork-able texture. In this recipe, I took advantage of the moisure-trapping to steam the squash shells while the stuffing cooked directly underneath them. Win! They still have to get finished in the oven if you like them with nice hot sauce and melted cheese, but once it’s in the oven, you can ignore that, too.

I doubt that I made up this recipe, but I no longer remember where I first saw it. I’ve been making it as a quasi-Italian dish, but there’s no reason not to take it across the Mediterranean — maybe use sumac, mashed chickpeas and feta for a Middle Eastern dish served with couscous, or use lentils, paneer and curry powder (hush, purists!) for an Indian-ish squash served with basmati or biryani. Not sure what kinda sauce you’d use, though.

Slow Cooker Stuffed Summer Squash
(serves 4 — I planned to have leftovers)
Two medium zucchini, yellow crookneck or other stuff-able summer squash (patty pans seem like they’d be hard to use)
Half a box of fake ground beef
Half an onion (to make about a cup chopped)
Veggies of your choice, chopped fairly fine (I used carrots and red bell pepper)
Dried basil, oregano and rosemary (or fresh is awesome, if you have it)
salt & pepper
Olive oil
Parmesan and/or mozzarella cheese. If you are not a cheese fan, you could use bread crumbs or ground nuts instead.
A fair amount of red sauce — say, two cups
pasta

Add a glug (~2 tsp) of olive oil to your slow cooker and turn it on high. Ignore for 15-30 minutes. Add onions and stir. Ignore on high for 3 hours or so, stirring if you get a moment, until onions are transparent and soft. The onions on the outside do tend to burn a bit, but not in a way that seems to affect flavor.

Meanwhile, cut the stem and flower ends off your squash and cut in half lengthwise as evenly as you can manage. Take a serving spoon and scoop out the guts, leaving enough of a shell in the edges to keep the whole thing from collapsing. The guts should be easy to scoop. Reserve guts on a cutting board and chop them up. Also chop your veggies.

When the onions are ready, stir in all your veggies along with the salt, pepper, basil, oregano and rosemary. I didn’t really measure this, but I’d say there was about 1/4 tsp rosemary, 1/2 tsp oregano and closer to 1 tsp basil, plus just a pinch or two of salt and as much black pepper as I could stand grinding before my wrist got tired — maybe another 1/2 tsp. You probably don’t need to put the herbs in right then, but the more time, the better. Plus I like the smell. You could probably also put in the fake meat now — it’s dry and can burn in a frying pan, which made me hesitate to do it with the slow cookier, but there’s usually a fair bit of moisture in the bottom of the pot by now.

Ignore this for another hour or two, stirring if you want. Then layer your squash shells over the veggies, facedown, without stirring.

Ignore for another hour or so. I had to leave about a half hour after I did that, so I dashed off an email to J. asking him to please remove the whole shebang when he got home (probably 15-30 minutes after I left), stuff the shells and bake them (at, let’s say, 350 F for 20 minutes) with red sauce and cheese. He didn’t remember the part about the sauce, but they came out well anyway!