Stuffed tomatoes and courgettes

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 4 people, you will need:

• 1 4 tomatoes
• 2 500 g minced beef
• 3 4 courgettes
• 4 2 slices ham
• 5 1 onion
• 6 2 shallots
• 7 a little olive oil
• 8 2 cloves garlic
• 9 1 sprig rosemary
• 10 1 sprig thyme
• 11 1 bayleaf
• 12 50 g grated cheese
• 13 1 beef stock cube
• 14 salt
• 15 pepper
• Total weight: 2,260 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
1 hour 7 min.	45 min.	1 hour 50 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Wash 4 tomatoes and 4 courgettes, if possibly keeping the small green stalk of tomatoes.
2	Cut top off courgettes, remove inner flesh with a teaspoon.
3	Discard all fibre and seeds, but keep the firm flesh, and cut into small pieces.
4	Do the same thing for tomatoes.
5	Also keeping flesh.
6	Salt inside vegetables, and put upside down on a rack to drain them.
7	Cut 2 slices ham into small pieces.
8	Chop 1 onion and 2 shallots.
9	Heat a little olive oil in a pan and add chopped onion and shallots, and 2 cloves garlic without peeling. Salt and pepper.
10	Cook 2 or 3 minutes, then add 1 beef stock cube, mix well.
11	Add 500 g minced beef, salt again and cook. When it's cooked, remove and discard garlic cloves.
12	In another pan, heat a little olive oil (if possible with herbs). When it's hot, add tomato pieces and cook a few minutes (frying tomatoes gives a really good flavour).
13	Add courgette pieces and herbs (rosemary, thyme and bayleaf) and leave to cook...
14	... until it's quite dry. Discard herbs.
15	Add cooked meat, ham, mix well and taste to check seasoning. Filling is ready. Preheat oven to 200°C or 392°F.
16	In a large oven-proof dish, put tomatos and courgettes side by side.
17	Stuff each one with filling.
18	Add 50 g grated cheese on top.
19	Put "hats" in the dish too, but not on the vegetables, so they can cook easily.
20	Put in the oven for about 30 minutes.
21	You can now put "hats" on top of vegetables, just before serving.

Remarks

You can also add cheese to filling, at the same time as ham.

---