Courgettes farcies au poulet

Yes, it's still courgettes (zucchini) season. Yesterday I took some of the yellow "lemon squash" to our neighbors. They said they haven't had any luck growing zucchini this summer. About as soon as a courgette forms, they said, it shrivels up and dies. That's not happening on this side of the road.

So we made and enjoyed zucchini "boats" filled with chicken breast that we put through the meat grinder. I found a recipe on the web for zucchini stuffed with chicken cooked in Buffalo wing sauce. I was skeptical, but I thought it was worth a try.

If you don't know what Buffalo wings or Buffalo wing sauce is, well... I think most people in the U.S. do now. It's made with Louisiana hot sauce, butter, and a few other flavor ingredients. Buffalo chicken wings were first made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo in western New York state decades ago, and now there are chains of restaurants that specialize in them. Besides the hot sauce, the recipe calls for vinegar, butter or margarine, garlic, and Worcestershire sauce, among other flavor ingredients. Here's a link.

Now, I have to say that it's not easy to find Louisiana hot sauce here in the French countryside. But we've discovered a really good, affordable substitute. It's called harissa and it's the hot pepper paste that is served with North African couscous, which is one of the most popular foods in France. It costs less than one euro for a big tube of the pepper puree. Harissa is 80% to 90% pureed hot red peppers with the rest of the ingredients being pureed garlic and powdered carraway and coriander seeds. It works great in the wing sauce.

Procedure: grind the chicken — I noticed recently that SuperU sells packages of ground (minced) turkey, but I didn't buy any — and cook it in a frying pan. Make the wing sauce and then pour it into the pan with the chicken. Cook for just a minute or two.

I like to steam or blanch the zucchini, cut in half lengthwise, so that it's at least partially cooked before it goes into the oven. Then scrape out the pulp and seeds to hollow out the boats. You can put some of the pulp and seeds in with the chicken and sauce.

Fill the zucchini boats with chicken mixture and sprinkle grated cheese (mozzarella) over all. Cook in the oven long enough to heat everything through and melt the cheese.

Try it — you'll like it. It's not necessarily as spicy as you might think.