Jackson Jambalaya

I have been a big fan of Mexican food for many years, actually from a Saturday in April of 1971 when I had my first Taco at the World's Fair Park in Seattle, while on a three-day pass from Fort Lewis. Funny that I can so clearly remember the exact moment when I crunched into that taco from the food court beside the Space Needle and thought, "Where have you been for my entire life of sheltered existence?"

I am as guilty as anyone for feeling stuffed after a big meal. However, the stuffing I want to share with you this week involves ground beef, lots of peppers, peppery stuff, and queso sauce stuffed into a zucchini boat to give the dish a distinct Mexican flavor. By the way, this is post number 26, which I guess is half a year - thanks to you Oh Great King of All Fishes for the half year of hospitality.

Since my eventful day of culinary adventure in 1971, I have enjoyed pretty much every Mexican or Texican meal I ever ordered, or cooked, from Mexico City, to Matamoras, Diamond Lake, IL, or Meridian, MS. 

The nicest meal I can remember was Pescado Zarandeado from the restaurant at the Salvadore Dali Hotel in Mexico City. Sadly, that restaurant is gone, and the Salvadore Dali now carries some other chain's name. The scariest mouthful of Mexican was in a Taquira in Nuevo Laredo, where I took a Captain Jack sized bite of a beautiful Pico de Gala served with my flank steak carne asada that immediately took my breath away and nearly led to a hospital ER visit for Hot Pepper respiratory shutdown. 

Today, I rate every Mexican restaurant visit against La Pinata, on 18th Avenue in Meridian. La Pinata is located beside The Rib Shack, a block off the I-20-N frontage road. When you see the "You don't need no teeth to eat our meat" sign on the side of The Rib Shack, you will know you are there. Very few Mexican joints come close to the pleasure of a La Pinata meal. We probably dined with them twice a month for close to ten years when we lived there. 

Sorry, I am rambling again. Let's get back to this post and my desire to share the recipe for a tasty low carb, keto friendly dish you might enjoy making for your family or friends, even if you choose to not tell them it's low carb. 

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Mexican Beef and Pepper Stuffed Zucchini Boats

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 medium zucchini squash, cut in half, with the center scraped out to make boats
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 medium onion, diced
5 Tablespoons (approximate) spice blend (below)
2 teaspoons adobo salt for zucchini boat seasoning
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
2 Tablespoons jalapeño peppers, diced
1/4 cup diced green, yellow, orange, and red bell peppers
Pam spray for oven dish
1/4 - 1/2 cup Pancho’s White Queso Cheese
Badia Chipotle Sauce, to taste

Spices (clockwise from center top of photo)

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 Tablespoon paprika
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon Adobo salt
1 1/2 teaspoons Lawry’s garlic salt
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons ground Chipotle pepper
Inner circle
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cilantro flakes
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Directions:

Set up the zucchini boats. After cutting in half and hollowing the flesh out with a spoon, season the zucchini boats with adobo salt, to season the squash and help draw the water out of the zucchini. If you don’t dry them out, the finished zucchini boats will be too wet. Place zucchini boats, flat side down on a cooking rack, with a paper towel or two under them, and dry in a 225 degree oven, for an hour or two to pull the water out of the zucchini. I am sure you could just salt the boats and place them flat side down on paper towels for a few hours to allow them to weep away the liquid. IMO, drying them in the oven works well, but if you want to pull the water out of the zucchini some other way, that will be fine.

Add ground beef, onion and spices then cook until the beef is done. Note: I add the zucchini I scraped out to make the boats into the meat after browning it.

Add the tomatoes, the diced jalapeño, and the diced bell peppers. Cook until the peppers are soft. I seem to have lost the photo of this mixture after I cooked it.

Next, spray the oven dish with some Pam, Place the seasoned and dried out boats, then fill with the cooked stuffing.

The mixture is then covered with Pancho's white queso sauce. Pancho’s is very good stuff, creamy with a nice hint of jalapeño. It also tastes great in a bowl, heated up a little in the microwave and served with white corn tortilla chips. This stuff works great for any Mexican recipe where you want a nice white cheese sauce and you should try it if you have never had any. All the grocers (Kroger, Walmart, etc.) seem to have it, somewhere close to the cream cheese in the refrigerated section.

My meat filling was still warm enough to melt the sauce, so I added a little more queso maybe three times as each addition melted and soaked into the stuffing.

Then I needed to set my sauce. Everything was already cooked, so I did this in the oven at 350 degrees F for 20 - 30 minutes.

To serve, I plated the zucchini with a simple lettuce salad, topped with some sour cream and chipotle sauce.  I also added a little more queso over the stuffing after plating, then a little chipotle over the sauce. Chipotle has heat, so be careful if you are not fond of pepper heat.

If you love peppers (and I do), you can substitute Banana (300-500 SU), Anaheim (500 – 2,500 SU) or Pablano (1,000 – 2,000 SU) peppers for the Zucchini used here.

For comparison, Jalapeño peppers are 2500 – 5000 SU, and Cayenne pepper is 30,000 – 50,000 SU, using the Scoville Unit (SU) rating of heat.  The hottest pepper I know of is the Carolina Reaper at 1,500,000 – 2,200,000 SU. 1.5 - 2.2 million SUs is Cop spray potent.

Here is what my stuffed banana pepper dish, using flank steak looks like. Someday I will do it for you guys if I am able to stay on The King of Fishes' good side. At the moment, we are still ok with each other, so I remain hopeful....