Stuffed pattypan Squash! My New Favorite!

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     Don't you just love happy accidents?  I do, especially when it comes to my garden! Last year, the happy accident was that I ended up growing tons of pumpkin plants, thinking that some of them would be pattypan squash.  I only ended up with one pattypan plant, but tons of pumpkins which yielded me over 15 pumpkins!  I have frozen pumpkin puree in my freezer to last for years!   This year, I thought that I had planted an over abundance of yellow squash, but as it turns out, I planted patty pan in one of the spots and it is producing prolifically! 
       Besides the few pattypan that I was able to harvest last year, this is the first time that I am going to be able to find new recipes, give away and preserve pattypan squash!  I am so excited! I came up with a simple and delicious recipe yesterday that I will share with you today!  Click Read More! 

First of all, let me tell you about Pattypan Squash!

     Pattypan is a delicious summer squash.  It has a delicate flavor, more flesh and slightly drier than zucchini and such a cute little ruffly shape!  I get such a kick out of seeing the new baby ones forming on the plants.  I was so surprised when I looked and thought I would see yellow squash, but then saw the cute ruffle of pattypan.  I don't know what happened, but I'm not complaining.
      Pattypan is one of those crops that will continue to produce prolifically throughout the summer and the more you harvest it, the more fruit will grow on it! (Yes, it is a fruit technically, but we count it as a vegetable usually!)  
      The skin of the pattypan is edible and thin. No need to peel it!  
    When you harvest these cute squash, leave a longish stem until you are ready to use it to keep it fresher.  There are many colors: green, white and yellow and the best size to harvest is when they are between 2-4 inches in diameter.  Thus you can see the various sizes of mine.  
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How I Came Up With This Recipe:

      I wrote about my first experience with pattypan squash last year and showed you how I prepared those few squash.  But, because I love the shape of this squash so much, I really wanted to highlight that in a recipe.  This year, I'm harvesting my pattypan a little sooner, so that the skin is more tender and they are the recommended size.  The flesh of the squash is fairly soft and easy to work with before cooking.  So, I decided to cut them in half horizontally and stuff them!  

I cut across the ruffle horizontally so that each half showed the ruffle of the squash.

Here is the tender inside.

      Since I was stuffing the squash, I decided to bake it and make it with Italian seasoning and sauce. I made special meatballs to put right in the middle of the seed cavity.

The seeds were very easy to spoon out.

The seed cavity left behind is the perfect place to stuff them.

I arranged them in a 9x13 baking dish by rubbing the skin side with olive oil and sprinkling on salt and pepper to the flesh side.

     For the stuffing, I made a special meatball.  I made my own bread crumbs, or you could use purchased bread crumbs and season them with a few extra things.  I have small sweet peppers in my garden, I chopped up a couple of those and ground them into my bread crumbs along with about one greed onion and a few sprigs of fresh oregano.  I had to use dried basil because mine was bolting so I had to pull it out of my garden and didn't have any fresh.  But, dried works just fine.  
         I only used about 3/4 cup of the bread crumb mixture.  I refrigerated the rest to use up in the next couple of days in another recipe.  I mixed them in with the meat, as well as an egg, garlic and other seasonings.  Then, I formed meatballs and plunked them down into the cavity of the squash.  
     I used about half of a large jar of spaghetti sauce to sauce over the top of the meatballs and pattypan.  If you have two pans of pattypan, the one jar would work great.  I also had enough leftover meatballs to freeze about 9 of them for another time.  So, this recipe could easily make two 9x13 pans of stuffed pattypan.  
       Finally, I topped everything with both Parmesan and Mozzarella cheeses.  Then I covered it with foil and baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F.  After 30 min, the meatball wasn't quite to temperature, so I uncovered the pan and baked it for 20 more minutes.  Everything was perfect!  I hadn't varied the size of the meatballs very much, even though the squash was varied in size because I felt that even baking of the meatballs was probably the most important thing. 
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Well, the really tiny ones are smaller, but they came out great! I think if you had all little pattypans, they would make nice little appetizers! These are ready for the oven! (except for the foil cover)

Out of the oven!

     This recipe came out so terrific!  The squash was tender but not mushy.  The flavor of the squash is mild and lends itself well to the Italian seasonings.  Because my pattypans are producing so well, I know that I will be making this recipe again and again this summer! I hope that you give it a try and love it!  If you aren't growing pattypan in your garden, I highly recommend it!  Remember to click on the recipe to get the printable pdf. 
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• I get many of my seeds, including these pattypan, from SeedsNow!  They are a great company! 
• If you don't have a 9x13 Pyrex Baking Dish, Amazon has one on sale right now!