Stuffed Zucchini

One of my friends grows zucchinis in his garden and since the plants always give quite a prolific harvest he has been nice enough to leave a few on the plant for a little extra time and give them to me. Thus I have obtained large zucchinis, allowing me to cook the dish I alluded to earlier.

Ingredients:
- 1 large zucchini
- olive oil
- 1 large onion
- 6 large tomatoes
- 4 cloves garlic
- handfull fresh basil
- 100 g (4 oz) butter
- 2 1/2 dL (1 cup) grated cheese
- 5 tbsp (panko) bread crumbs
- approx. 1/16 L (2 fl. oz.) cream
- salt and pepper

Chop the onion coarsely and heat it in the olive oil for a few minutes before adding coarsely chopped tomatoes, mashed garlic, chopped leaves of fresh basil, salt and pepper. Leave to simmer while preparing the other parts.

Melt the butter, mix in finely grated cheese - such as Madrigal baby swiss, or any other pale, semi-soft not too strong cheese. Then add the breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. Finally add cream until the texture is like thick oatmeal.

Take the large zucchini, rinse it well before cutting it open along the long axis - they're not particularly hard, so cutting them is quite easy. I only removed the ends because the zucchini I got was too long for my oven. Remove the seeds with a spoon.

Place the tomato/onion mixture in the bottom of a baking pan, then put the zucchinis on top and spread the cheese/bread crumb paste in the cavity where the seeds used to be. Put in the oven at 200 C (400 F) for about 40 minutes - then up the heat to 220 C (440 F) for about 5 minutes. The cheese/bread crumb paste should turn golden brown.

Serve hot, prefeably with fresh baked buns.

If you have leftovers the dish actually goes quite well cold too.