Making a Meal out of a Marrow

It’s happened to the best of us. For months we prepare the soil, sow seeds and lovingly tend our gardens and allotments. We turn our backs on our vegetable gardens just for a few days whilst away on our well deserved holidays and return to find an enormous marrow where only days before were baby courgettes.

When I have inadvertently cultivated marrows in the past I found they could be a rather bland vegetable so my safe option was to make a tasty bolognese sauce to stuff them with and spice up the meal.

But we’d had burgers for our barbecue the day before and in my kitchen it is against the law to eat the same food (in this case mince) two days in a row!

So with no plan, apart from my friend the marrow, I put my mind to some of my ‘experimental cookery’.

The children don’t like the taste of courgettes so a bit of a challenge to start with. Unsurprisingly they haven’t yet developed a taste for blue cheese and in common with most of the extended family on the maternal side, a mushroom would have them running for the hills – so two obvious flavouring & stuffing options summarily dismissed!

I decided that I needed to disguise the flavour a little so this is what I did.

1. Cut the marrow into slices – approx 1.5 – 2 inches thick – one for each person eating
2. Scoop out the fleshy core to create a hole in each slice
3. Line each scooped out slice with one or two slices of bacon
4. Measure about a heaped desert spoonful of uncooked rice into each bacon covered slice
5. Crush 2 garlic cloves and share it between all the slices, pressing it into the mixture
6. Season if required
7. Cook in the oven until the marrow is soft and the rice is cooked through (about 180 degrees for about 30 mins – but don’t quote me on that as I was catching up on Facebook some computer ‘work’ while it was cooking and may have got distracted!)

When presented with their meal, my children initially said they don’t like courgettes, but when I told them it was a new vegetable called marrow, they were happy to try it.

THE VERDICT

My six year old didn’t quite eat all of his, but everyone else enjoyed it and cleared their plates.

Myself and Practically Perfect husband thought it was extremely tasty (for a marrow) and I would definitely cook it again next time my vegetable garden gets out of control! 4.5 clean plates out of 5 ain’t bad, so on this occasion I would call my experimental cooking a decent success!

If you like the sound of this recipe and would like to try it out, or have a variation which works well for your family, we would love to hear from you.

Happy cooking!