A Long, Overdue Vegetarian Delight

With school, life has been way too busy to have free-time, let alone enjoy cooking. However, I did find time once in the past 3 months to try out some new vegetarian recipes. Since I have a tendency to use a recipe more as "guidelines" rather than strictly following the directions I altered the recipe a little.

Veggie Pasta & Veggie-Stuffed Tomato

This dinner was a combination of two recipes:
First was an altered version of the Pasta w/ Butternut Squash, Spinach, and Prosciutto recipe from the Winter 2010 version of America's Test Kitchen. Being vegetarian I completely changed this recipe to only have vegetables such as: zucchini, squash, bell peppers, tomatoes, and spinach.
First I cooked the vegetables in a frying pan with butter, oregano, basil & a splash of white wine to add flavor. And then added this little medley to the pasta.

The second recipe was the Gruyere-filled Beefsteak Tomatoes from the Accidental Vegetarian cookbook. While I changed the other recipe to be extremely simple, the stuffed tomatoes was much more complex. The recipe is as follows:

4 Beefsteak Tomatoes
1 3/4 cups heavy cream
2 zucchini (finely diced)
2 red bell peppers (seeded & finely diced)
1 garlic clove (crushed)
1 3/4 cups freshly grated Gruyere cheese

(1) Skin tomatoes by putting a cross on the bottom, plunging them into boiling water for 30 secs, then into iced water - this will allows the skin to peel off easily. Slice off the tops and put them aside, scoop out the pulp into a bowl, being careful not to break the skin & put to the side.
(2)Put the cream in a heavy-bottom pan, bring slowly to a boil, then cook to reduce the volume in half.
(3)Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a large pan & gently fry the vegetables and garlic for about 5 mins.
(4)Add 2/3 cup of the cheese to the reduced cream & stir it until it melts. Remove from the heat and fold in the fried vegetables.
(5)Divide the filling between the tomatoes and top it off with the remaining cheese, sit the lids of the tomatoes on top and put it on a baking sheet.
(6)Bake the tomatoes for 6-8 minutes - until the cheese melts.

The stuffed tomatoes took a decent amount of prep time before they were fully complete, but they made the perfect side dish - as long as you don't have too many that you're cooking for, since it requires a fully tomato per person.

Hopefully, I'll have a little more free time in the next few months to try some new recipes since I recently got 3 new vegetarian cookbooks... :P