These stuffed summer squash may be light but they’re big on flavor. The flavor of the Amalfi coast.
Colotura di Alici is an Italian style fish condiment. It can be found in gourmet stores or ordered online.
Ingredients
- 6 small round summer squash
- good quality olive oil
- 1 large shallot, minced
- 6 clove garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 8 anchovy fillets
- ¼ cup milk (for soaking anchovies if necessary)
- 2 tablespoon chopped italian parsley
- 4 slice good rustic bread or two cups prepared coarse bread crumbs
- 1 teaspoon colatura di alici
- salt and pepper
- 1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
- ½ cup parmesan cheese, grated
Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 F
Start by cutting off a little lid and hollowing out each of my squash.
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a sauté pan set over medium hr=eat. Add the interior flesh, shallots, garlic, 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, and the prepared anchovies.
If you can find salt-packed as opposed to oil-packed anchovies try and get them.
The salt-packed variety needs to be soaked to remove the salt and reconstitute them somewhat. I often do this in milk.
Cook this mixture 6–8 minutes until the anchovies practically disintegrate into the vegetables. To this mixture add chopped parsley and freshly toasted coarse breadcrumbs.
I have to admit that, when it comes to cooking dried beans (which I do a lot), I’m a pressure cooker gal all the way. They are such a big part of my diet that being able to reduce the time required to cook them from hours to minutes using a pressure cooker was hugely appealing.
And I usually don’t do the soaking overnight thing, but I will do what one of your other commenters mentioned, which is to boil the beans briefly and then leave them to sit in the hot water for a hour before cooking them. Having said all that, on those days where I have the time, I could definitely go with your oven-baked method, because I know I’ve loved it whenever I’ve made baked white beans. You definitely have me pondering the whole bean-cooking debate, that’s for sure.
Your soups are fantastic — I just hope that by the end of your recuperation, you’ll still be able to look at another bowl of soup! This is a fine tutorial on cooking beans; I didn’t realize that they needn’t be soaked overnight (which always seemed like gospel) and may be cooked in the oven. I will have to give it a try!
OMG Greg! What did I miss while I was gone? A broken jaw? Poor baby, and here I am pissing and moaning because they cut off our phone and internet for 10 days. Yipes, now I have to go back and read where I left off. But one thing is that you are giving us lots of yummy soup recipes.
Sorry about your jaw. Don’t worry, I can never get enough soup talk. And bean talk to boot. I love discussing and eating beans. I did not know that pre-soaking them affects their flavor and this idea of baking them seems like a good idea, too. I reference this website: http://www.centralbean.com/storeandsoak.html
and they gave me some interesting info, to bring the beans to a boil, turn off the flame, then let them sit in the warm water for about an hour. This really softens them up. I think that I also read on this site to NOT salt the beans because it makes their cook time increase and it makes them gassy! I honestly have been following this rule and have not had the gassy affect. This is a riveting bean discussion by the way! Heal well!
I don’t think I have this many soup ideas– you may want to contact Guinness. I may have just polished off 51 tasting sized plates, but I think I could get this in between the cracks.
…I heard you were in training for that event! GREG
It looks like it has a pencil thin mustache. Sorry, it’s late.….…..
eric
When will you publish your salads and soups book?
I realize I need to make more soup and now I have such a wonderful collection of recipes to choose from — thanks for sharing — hoping you are at least starting to feel better. Will there be a video forthcoming on this?
I’m actually intrigued by how much you can turn into soup. I mean you used garlic bread the other day!? Who would have thought of that?
Bean soup look good! I’ll mine with a couple pieces of crusty bread.