Spaghetti squash, zucchini “pasta” and more

Series: From my Covid gardens


If you remember, I made green tomato sauce from my last tomato harvest. I froze most of it and have been using it since.

For the carnivores, I added a meat option to my green tomato sauce. Well, it just so happed that I had some ground beef and pork that had to be used. I chopped a big onion and sautéed it together with the ground meat.  Once the meat was cooked, I added 2 containers (about 3 cups) of the green tomato sauce I had in the fridge. After all was cooked well, I used about a cup and a half with spaghetti that I cooked in parallel. The rest? Well now I have more frozen pasta sauce – green tomatoes with ground meat.

Below are a few ways I used the sauces.

If you are vegetarian or vegan, use just the green tomato sauce (or any other you like).

The best pasta for the green tomatoes is the penne or other short cut pasta. It holds the taste better. Since I forgot to take photos, below is my spaghetti recipe.

Spaghetti

Ingredients:

Spaghetti or penne pasta for 2 or 3 people (I had Jamie Oliver handmade to use)

Herbs and spices to taste

Grated mild cheese

Preparation

Cook the spaghetti to the instructions you have on the package.

Mix a cup and a half of the sauce with the spaghetti. Add parsley or basil and/or ground peppercorns. Grate cheese (this time I used a Bulgarian style cheese called kashkaval that is similar to cheddar, but softer and milder in taste). Note that the green tomato sauce has a very strong taste and the traditional Italian parmesan would not be appropriate. If you use cheese, use a mild one.


Spaghetti squash

This one is really simple. Just cut a medium-sized spaghetti squash in half lengthwise. Discard the seeds. Salt and pepper to taste, oil and put on an oiled pan, with the cut side down. Roast at 400°F for about 20 min or until the inside is soft.

With a fork scrape the inside. The scraped flesh looks like spaghetti (but of course tastes like squash?).

You can add any pasta sauce, or just green herbs will do. I had already sautéed half a bell pepper, half a small zucchini, 2 celery sticks and a carrot (all cut into big chunks).

To this mix I added one container of my meat and green tomato sauce. I spooned the “spaghetti” from the squash shell into the pan, stirred it to mix.

It made a delicious light dinner (note that the ground meat in one container of green tomato sauce is about 2 tablespoons) for 3 and we all had lunch the next day with the leftovers.

At serving I added crumbled feta cheese. It adds to the taste and colour. If you decided to use feta though, make sure you reduce your salt on the squash or the entire dish.


Zucchini spaghetti with green tomatoes

Zucchini spaghetti is a popular recipe among those owning a spiralizer. They are as close to spaghetti as the spaghetti squash? but the name comes from resemblance and desire to replace the real pasta with some vegetables.

There are many ways to cook the shredded zucchini. Here I use my green tomatoes. I used both – a container of just green tomato sauce and a container of the one with ground meat described above).

Recently I acquired a spiralizer and decided to try it with the sauce above. You can spiralize the zucchini with your potato peeler. I have done it many times before.

For this recipe I spiralized 3 smallish zucchini. We used the bonus core that looks like mushroom left over after spiralizing in the omelette next morning.

I emptied two containers of my sauces – one with the meat and one with tomatoes only into a frying pan to warm. You can add some garlic if you wish. After the sauce began simmering, I added the zucchini and stirred them into the sauce. Turned the burner off and let them simmer for about 3 min. Added chopped dill and my dish was done.

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