Travel Episode 3: Quick Koosa Mahshi (Syrian Stuffed Squash…That’s Not Stuffed)

Your host is a little spaced out this week, but luckily it’s a quick and easy meal, learned from a Syrian doctor and single mom: a fast way to get all the satisfying flavor of much more labor-intensive stuffed squash. Pair it with rice and yogurt for an easy lunch or dinner.

Shopping list

* Ground beef or lamb* “Gray” squash or zucchini* Garlic* Allspice (ground for the recipe)* Dried mint* Olive oil* Lemon* Ground sumac* Red chile flakes (Aleppo pepper ideally)

Quick / Faux Koosa Mahshi (Syrian-style stuffed squash)

Yup, meal in a bowl, and no shame in that.

This is a super-shortcut, weeknight version of stuffed squash. For that dish, traditionally you’d use koosa, which is a kind of bulbous squash that gives you a bit more to core and stuff. It’s sold in my NYC market as “gray squash” or “Mexican squash.” (There’s a photo at the bottom for reference.) If you can’t find that, of course, for this recipe, you don’t need to core anything, so ordinary zucchini is fine as well.

In the podcast, I say I’m going to make a little yogurt-cucumber salad…and then I just don’t bother! I figured it’s a little redundant, because cucumber is basically squash, and there’s already dried mint in the dish. But if you want it, here’s a recipe/description (scroll down).

But if you want to make this a slightly more elaborate meal, you could do two things: 1) nice rice, like a basmati rice with a little butter, and maybe some onion, and 2) yogurt with a bit of salt, garlic and dried mint, to better approximate the sauce you’d usually get with the proper stuffed koosa.

One more thing I sometimes do (not mentioned in the podcast) is cook the meat and squash with a bit of goat butter. Only because we happen to have it! Adds some nice funky richness.

For 3-4 portions, with rice

4 or 5 garlic cloves

Olive oil

3/4 pound ground lamb or beef

2 large pinches ground allspice

Salt and pepper

4 gray squash

2 even larger pinches dried mint

Aleppo pepper or other red chile flakes, totally optional

Juice of half a lemon

Ground sumac

Peel and roughly chop the garlic.

In a large skillet, add a tiny bit of olive oil and fry the ground meat with a bit of salt, breaking it up with a spoon. Midway through, add the pepper, allspice and the garlic. (Or…if you space out like I did in the podcast, you can add the spices to the meat later, and fry the garlic with the squash!) Stir and fry until it’s good and brown and crumbly, and most of the liquid has cooked away. Scrape the meat and all the browned bits into a large bowl (you’ll be adding all the cooked zucchini in here later).

While the meat is browning, trim the ends off your squash and cut into thin half-rounds. (Slice in half vertically, then line up the halves and slice through — quarter-inch slices are fine.) If you have very thin zucchini, no need to slice in half, although they’re easier to manage with a flat cut surface.

Go with this single-layer approach to frying if you want more browning and less mush.

In the same pan as the meat, add a little more olive oil and fry the squash. If you want them a bit brown, do them in two batches. If you want them a bit softer (and possibly done faster), throw them all in at once. You can even put the lid on for a bit, so they steam through. When they’re close to done, add the dried mint,