Please welcome Passionate Cook Josephine Myles to the Cafe!
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My recipe for Stuffed Squash Boats was created back when I lived on a narrowboat on the English canal. The summer of 2005 was a scorcher, and I spent much of my time lazing under the trees with my baby daughter. Fortunately, we now had a permanent mooring on a plot of private land, and the owner allowed me to regenerate one of his overgrown allotments. Of course, I had no idea at the time just how many courgettes (that’s zucchini to all the Americans) one plant could grow when the weather was right.
I’d planted three courgette plants and three custard marrow plants—that’s a type of patty pan summer squash, and very delicious they are too. Now I love courgettes, but even with the invention of the grilled courgette, cheese, and mayonnaise sandwich, I still couldn’t get through all of the pesky things. I gave away as many as I could, yet still, every morning I would find yet another courgette that had ballooned overnight into something more accurately termed a marrow. I can’t stand marrows. Or at least, I couldn’t back then. And as I was rapidly discovering, everyone else seems to feel the same way. You can’t give away marrows.
Never one to back down from a challenge, I was determined to find a way to make these marrows edible. I tried Marrow Curry (revolting), Marrow Pickle (so-so) and various stuffed marrow recipes from books. None of them had enough flavour for me, but I liked the shape they made when you cut them sideways and hollowed them out. They were like narrowboats, which seemed beautifully appropriate. Consequently, my original recipe was called Stuffed Marrow Boats, but American friends told me that the first thing that sprang to their mind when hearing that was bone marrow. Not an association I wanted them to be making, and seeing as how you can make it with any summer squash, I changed the title. I still miss that pun, though 
Eventually I hit on stuffing the marrows with an onion, garlic and mushroom mix, then topping it off with cheese and cashew nuts. There was enough protein there to make it a decent vegetarian main course, but the recipe was still lacking something. When I caught my husband putting ketchup on his portion, I realised what it needed: a rich tomato sauce.
Now, when you’re cooking in a tiny boat galley with a miniature sink and finite water tank, you do your best to use as few dishes as possible. I decided to cook up my sauce in the same pan I’d fried the filling in, so that it would absorb any remaining flavour from the other ingredients. The sauce cooked down nicely, but it still wasn’t thick enough and I was worried about my gas canister running out. Then I thought about the marrow boats I had roasting away in the oven. Why not surround them in a sea of tomato sauce? It worked brilliantly, and resulted in a dish that not only looks great, but tastes amazing. There’s no need to add any ketchup or gravy—just a few spuds and some steamed veg are perfect, perhaps with a lamb chop too if you’re a carnivore.
Think you don’t like marrows? Try this recipe. I guarantee it will have you thinking again!
Stuffed Squash Boats appears in the side dishes section of the Passionate Cooks Cookbook
Author Bio:
English through and through, Josephine Myles is addicted to tea and busy cultivating a reputation for eccentricity. She writes gay erotica and romance, but finds the erotica keeps cuddling up to the romance, and the romance keeps corrupting the erotica. Jo blames her rebellious muse but he never listens to her anyway, no matter how much she threatens him with a big stick. She’s beginning to suspect he enjoys it.
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