A recipe for a tangy courgette and rice bake inspired by BBC Good Food

I read a lot of food magazines, and I love reproducing the recipes from their pages and learning from them along the way. Some days, I choose a recipe to make, and then I get to the store to buy the ingredients, and my mind takes me somewhere completely different. I go home to put together the recipe from the magazine, but I veer so far from it that the original is unrecognizable. Then I stop to think: "How did I get to this recipe? Where did this come from? This is totally not what I set out to do!" The end result tastes delicious, but it has very little to do with the magazine recipe that inspired it.

Today was one of those days. I started with a BBC Good Food magazine recipe for a courgette gratin (doesn't it sound good?) from the June 2010 issue, but I ended up with a casserole that did feature courgettes (humor me as I use courgette instead of zucchini. I am on a British kick today!), but with a more Middle Eastern twist to it. I think it was the crème fraiche in the original recipe that steered me to a different place. I went from courgette, rice, cheese, and crème fraiche to courgette, rice, ground meat, almonds, cumin, and yogurt. Make sense?

The dish is pretty simple. I quickly cooked the ground beef and onions with the spices and seasonings in a medium saucepan. Then I removed the meat from the saucepan, and then cooked the rice in that very pan with some vegetable broth. When the rice was cooked, I combined it with the reserved meat, and a little more cumin, and chopped parsley. I let the mixture cool while I chopped the courgettes. When the rice mixture was cooled (I actually left it in the fridge overnight because it had been a long day and it was a little late to be cooking), I added about 1 cup of plain yogurt. I filled the bottom of my Pyrex with the rice mixture, then I sprinkled some slivered almonds on top, then I topped with the courgette slices.

I brushed the top with some egg wash, and baked it for about 45 minutes at 375°F.

What I love about this dish is the tang of the yogurt. I love the combination of yogurt, ground beef, and cumin. The courgette slices on top are still fresh and slightly crisp, even after baking them. They are certainly not wilted and mushy as they would be if I had boiled them.

I probably would have never made it to this recipe without the BBC Good Food magazine I was reading last week. I suppose this is yet another reason to keep buying all these magazines: They inspire us in the kitchen. One day I will actually follow the original BBC Good Food recipe for the courgette gratin. For now, I will enjoy my dish that was somehow inspired by their recipe.

Tangy courgette and rice bake
Serves 6–8 (makes a 9x11 casserole)

• Olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 2 tsp cumin, divided
• 1 cup rice (I used brown basmati)
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 bunch of parsley, chopped
• 1 cup yogurt (I used 2% fat yogurt)
• ~40 grams slivered almonds
• 5 small courgettes, sliced
• Egg wash (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. In a medium saucepan coated with olive oil, cook the onions on medium heat until the are translucent.
3. Add the ground beef, 1 tsp cumin, salt and pepper. Stir occasionally until cooked through. Transfer the meat mixture to a bowl and set aside.
4. Turn up the heat under the same medium saucepan, add the rice and fry it until it is translucent (you may want to add a little more oil for this). Add the broth, bring it to a boil, cover, and simmer until all the liquid is absorbed.
5. When the rice is done, mix it with the meat mixture, add another 1 tsp of cumin, and the chopped parsley. Add the yogurt and spread the mixture evenly at the bottom of a 9x11 baking dish.
6. Sprinkle the slivered almonds, then the sliced courgette. Brush on the egg wash (if you are using egg wash). Sprinkle with a little salt and ground pepper.
7. Bake for about 45 minutes.

Ivonne from Cream Puffs in Venice is back from vacation. I hope that she will accept my magazine inspired creation for this week's edition of Magazine Mondays!