While we haven’t grown as many as we have other years, we are still scrambling to eat as many as we can before the cold weather hits and we have to wait a whole year for more. So when my kids oohed and ahhed over a zucchini recipe on a recent episode of River Cottage I pricked up my ears and later did a quick search and found this recipe for Bolognese Moussaka.
My kids call it ‘Zuc-agne’ (which is funny because most of them don’t like regular lasagne), but since I’ve simplified the recipe and taken out the cheese sauce I just call it Zucchini Bake. It really is one of the easiest, cheapest, quickest dinners on our menu plan at the moment.
| Super Easy Zucchini Bake |
- 2-3 large zucchinis
- grated mozzarella cheese
- bolognese sauce, or any tomato based pasta sauce.
- 1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
- herbs of choice
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (approx 350F) and grease a large lasagne dish.
- Slice your zucchinis lengthwise, as thin as you can. I find it’s much easier if you cit them in half first.
- Put a few spoonfuls of bolognese sauce on the bottom of the dish and spread it out as best you can. Then put a layer of zucchini, cover the zucchini with sauce, and sprinkle with cheese.
Repeat this process until your dish is almost full or you run out of ingredients. - Mix some herbs through your bread crumbs (We save random bits of bread and pita bread in the freezer and whiz it up in the food processor to make chunky crumbs which works great for this recipe.) and then cover the top of your ‘zuc-agne’ with a nice thick layer of herby bread crumbs.
- Bake in a moderate oven for about an hour or until the zucchini is cooked through and the bread crumbs are browned. Cover the top with foil if your crumbs brown before the rest is cooked.
I always make a double or triple batch of bolgenese sauce when I’m cooking and this is a perfect way to use it all up without being bored out of your brains with yet another meal of spag bol. This works just as well with a meat based sauce as it does with our ‘lentil-ese’ and I think it would be just as lovely with a plain tomato and herb sauce too.
An one last tip – if you have one child who doesn’t like the zucchini much like I do, you can easily cook some pasta and just spoon some of the cheesey bolognese sauce, minus the zucchini, over the pasta.
If you are looking for more easy family meals check out the Simple Family Dinner Blog Hop…
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- 2/27 Triple T Mum: Thermomix Tuna Pasta with Hidden Vegetables
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- 3/4 Pickle Bums: Super Easy Zucchini Bake & The European Mama: Pilaf
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- 3/6 Forever, For Always, No Matter What
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Think I might have to swap the zucchini for something else – mine are still at the “Ugh” stage with it which is frustrating as I adore it!
I have been thinking about doing a version with sliced potatoes… though you’d need to cook the potatoes first I think, otherwise it would take forever to bake in the oven…. hmm….
My neighbour has just given us some zucchini (including a ginormous – thetechnical term – one). This may be dinner tomorrow.
This is perfect for those rouge ginormous zucchini…. but you might want to discard the slices with the seeds if they are getting a bit huge and hard.
I had to gasp when your blog entry came to my inbox and it said it was zuchinni time! We just received 25 cm of snow. Then I went to your blog and saw you live in Australia. I live in Canada:)
Ah the frustration of the internet! I know I drool over all your summer images when we are in the middle of winter here so I am guessing it must be similar for you! If only I could post you a zucchini or two!
Thank you for participating in the Simple Family Dinner Blog Hop! Your zucchini bake looks YUM!
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