Tonight I had this great dinner planned out. A great dinner that included my husband at the grill. He's good with the grill. We just have a cheap charcoal grill that I wouldn't feel comfortable operating unless my family was
starving and that's the only way we could eat, but he's good at it. I wanted to grill Jamaican Jerk pork chops, have a nice green salad, and then my friend Kelly sent me the link to a recipe for Stuffed Grilled Zucchini. We're eating something from our garden (or our neighbor's garden) every night, and I'm getting kind of tired of fried and baked, fried and baked. So she graciously sent me several recipes that use summer produce in different ways.
Only it got to be 6pm and my husband still wasn't home from work. Hmmm. Where could he be? They're in the middle of a base-wide readiness exercise in which he's working even crazier hours than he was previously. And he's previously been working 12-14 hour days with no lunch breaks, but this time they can do crazy things like call him in out of a dead sleep at 12:30 am . They have to make sure if there is some horrible disaster somewhere that they can process their troops here and get them out within 48 hours. It's a worthy exercise, it's just unfortunate that it's falling now at this time when David's office is five attorneys short and the two that are there are being worked, literally, to death. I assure you I complain about much more than he does, and I try to keep mine to a minimum. It just gets lonely not having him around. A taste of what is to come, I suppose, when he deploys.
So I call him at 6pm. He's with a client. At 6pm. They rotate doing night legal assistance for people who work the night shift once a month, and it's his turn to do it. He'd been so busy today that he hasn't eaten or even had time to call and tell me he won't be home until probably after the kids are in bed. And you know that's late.
So, hungry, sad, and tired of whining, hungry kids under me (and rightfully so, I guess. It was 6pm and I hadn't let them have snacks since about 4), I took matters into my own hands.
If you haven't invested in a grill pan for your stovetop like this one, then you should.
I use mine a lot, and even more so during the winter when it's too cold to grill outside. This one, of course, is a Pampered Chef grill pan, but I'm sure there are other good ones out there. I just love the way the nonstick Pampered Chef pots and pans clean up. It's a snap.
So I grilled our porkchops on the grill pan inside (and even managed to get the criss-cross-apple-sauce grill marks!), made a salad, and then made the stuffed "grilled" zucchini. Only I had to adapt it a bit.
We all cleaned our plates, and possibly because we didn't eat until 6:45 and we were all starving, but it was good.
Stuffed Grilled Zucchini
4 medium zucchini
5 t olive oil, divided
1/2 c finely chopped onion. (I used red onion because I needed to use it up, but the recipe said vidalia was really good in this recipe.)
1 t minced garlic
1/2 c dry bread crumbs
1/4 c + 3 T shredded parmesan cheese
2 T minced fresh basil (I just sprinkled some dried basil over the top because despite my fresh herbs being literally right in front of me multiple times during the day while standing at the sink, I forgot to water them and they died. Sad.)
1/2 t salt
Cut zucchini in half lengthwise; scoop out pulp, leaving a 1/4" thick shell. Brush with 2t of oil; set aside. Chop pulp. In a large skillet, saute pulp and onion in remaining oil. Add garlic; cook 1 minute longer. Add bread crumbs; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from the heat. Stir in 1/4 c parmesan cheese, basil, and salt. Spoon into zucchini shells.
Sprinkle with 3 T parmeasan cheese. Grill, covered with foil, over medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until zucchini is tender.*
*So because I didn't have the grill fired up, I did things a bit differently. I assembled them according to the recipe, but them put them on a baking sheet and roasted them for about 20 minutes in a 425 degree oven. Then I took them out and added them to the hot grill pan after I took the pork chops out and put my grill press over the top and grilled them for about 10 minutes.
