I figured that it's a bit risky to serve something like that to most guests, because it's pretty much an entire meal, and another problem was that we only had one, which would make just two servings. Finally on Thursday I bought some ground chicken and didn't have guests lined up for Friday night. In a sense you can say that eating half a mini-pumpkin was the closest we had to a Thanksgiving meal.
Then I mixed the ground poultry (you can use chicken, turkey, beef or any combination) with tomato past, onion, an egg and spices.
I had about 2/3 a kilo, just under 3 lbs of ground chicken. It was about double the amount I needed for the two servings.
I used the leftover meat mixture to make a meatloaf, which conveniently fit in my oven to bake at the same time.
The stuffed mini-pumpkin looked pretty good when it came out of the oven.
And then we had to wait until Friday night to eat it. I was pretty nervous, because I usually serve a pretty standard meal, animal protein, a starch for my husband, salad and at least two vegetables. That's a standard meal. On Friday nights, my husband has soup and sometimes some corn on the cob, too.
You can't get a full idea of the size from the picture, but they were each a meal. I had also baked two tiny sweet potatoes. All I ate was my salad, the sweet potato, which I really didn't need and my serving of stuffed mini-pumpkin. My husband had the same, plus rice, soup and corn. I felt stuffed! And I'm a big eater.
You can do the same with any similar type of vegetable. The advantage of this size is that there really isn't any need to serve anything else besides the salad.
I could have flavored the chopped meat differently and probably will next time.
If you give this a try, please let me know how it comes out and other suggestions, thanks.
9 comments:
What a BRILLIANT recipe Batya! Yum, I need to figure out the calorie count on that and get your permission to include it in the Comfort Foods Cookbook. YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Looks good! I thought that dalorit was butternut squash, or something like it. I heard that a lot of pumpkin pie filling is actually that kind of squash, and not pumpkin.
BTW, do you know how many Israelis of American origin called me asking me where to find pumpkin pie? A lot. There were even those who weren't interested in Thanksgiving, just pumpkin pie.
You could've made a fortune if you had made pumpkin pies this year and sold them in Jerusalem.
;-)
Yocheved, you'd have to weigh the squash/pumpkin and measure the meat. I didn't add any oil. Of course give me full credit and maybe a copy of the book...
EA, I don't know how to make pumpkin pie and don't even know if I've ever eaten it.
sounds great! I sometimes make something similar with diced apples and cinnamon, instead of a meat filling.
@Esser - yes, dalorit is commonly known in the US as "butternut squash". I think Batya's describing it as "mini-pumpkin" is based on a translation of the Hebrew name.
Leah, Esser, there are all sorts of vegetables that can be stuffed in this manner making it a full meal. In Israel, we can frequently find a perfectly sized "dalorit" to do the job. I liked the idea that I didn't need to cook anything else for that meal and it was still very festive.
what I meant was - stuffing the squash with diced apples instead of meat. :) I know that many other vegetables can be stuffed with meat filling.
Leah, That would make an amzaing dessert, unless it's ground nuts and fruit for a vegetarian maindish.
Looks delicious. It's butternut squash
a, I'm sure there are numerous vegetables of that source of various names that can be stuffed in this way and filling enough to be a meal. Thanks
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