Food & Wine
Stuffed baked potatoes
A steaming-hot baked potato makes perfect comfort food and doesn't need lashings of butter and cheese to be delicious. This tasty vegetarian filling combines marinated mushrooms and zucchini for a healthy filling. Other fillings are limited only by your imagination.
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
- 4 baking potatoes, about 300g each
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 200g small open-cup mushrooms, about 5cm in diameter
- 1 large zucchini, about 170g, sliced
- 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper
- ⅓ cup (10g) chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Preparation:
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Push a metal skewer through each potato or push the potatoes onto a potato roasting rack. (Pushing a metal skewer into the potatoes helps to conduct heat through to their centres so that they cook more quickly.
- Place the potatoes directly on the shelf in the oven and bake for 1½ hours or until tender.
- Make the zucchini and mushroom filling when you first put the potatoes in the oven so that it has time to marinate.
- Alternatively, it can be made just before the potatoes are cooked and served hot.
- Heat a large ridged chargrill or frying pan.
- Drizzle half the oil over the pan and cook the mushrooms and zucchini slices for 10-15 minutes or until they are well-browned in places and softened and have released their juices.
- Transfer the vegetables to a bowl with all their juices and add the remaining oil, the vinegar and mustard.
- Season to taste, mix well and leave to marinate until the potatoes are cooked.
- Split open the baked potatoes, then press gently to part the halves, keeping them joined at the base.
- Stir the parsley into the marinated vegetables, then pile them into the potatoes.
- Serve immediately.
This article first appeared in Reader’s Digest.
Images: Getty