Signature Dish of the Day: Stuffed Zucchini Boats with Goat Cheese

Signature Dish of the Day: Happy December! Kicking off our holiday season in style with these incredibly delicious Stuffed Zucchini Boats with Goat Cheese as our signature dish of the day today! This is a new recipe I recently developed as part of my never-ending quest to find novel ways to cook one of my favorite vegetables. The versatile zucchini is also known as a courgette and is considered a type of summer squash. I was surprised to learn that even though it is viewed as a vegetable in culinary terms, zuchinni is in fact classified as a fruit in botanical terms 😲, at least according to this Wikipedia article. Come to think of it, this does somewhat make sense since they do contain lots of seeds...but I'll stick to viewing zucchini as a vegetable since I reside firmly in the culinary world 😁. I used three green zucchinis for this recipe and started the process by washing and cutting them lengthwise into symmetrical halves as much as I possibly could. I then scooped out the chunky flesh inside each of them using a small, sharp-edged spoon and set this aside (Note: do not throw these out, for they will become an extremely valuable component of the filling later on). I then placed them on a flat baking pan, seasoned with some extra virgin olive oil, black pepper, and smoked paprika as shown in the photo capture below, and let them bake at 400℉ for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I also started working on the filling by sautéing diced red onions and tomatoes with about 1lb. of ground chicken meat. I then added the precious zucchini flesh I had scooped out earlier to the mixture and seasoned with some salt, ground black pepper, turmeric, and smoked paprika. I kept stirring regularly as I let this mixture simmer over medium heat for about 15 minutes until the chicken was fully cooked. Once done, I worked on stuffing each of the zucchini halves as best as I could and then tossed these back into the oven for another 7 minutes. I then took them out and placed small dollops of fresh goat cheese on top of the stuffing mixture on each of the halves. I placed them back in the oven and broiled them under low heat for about 3 minutes before taking them out and serving hot. This recipe makes 3 servings and is absolutely heavenly! Do give it a try sometime during this holiday season. Enjoy!😍😇