Nostalgic lunch lowish carb

[saffron15]

I went to a good farmshop today. It is on a farm and has very good seasonal veg. I went last Friday having bought my fish at another farm shop and wanting to buy Swiss chard. I had crab salad in their cafe and discovered the Cromer Crabs were fresh on aThursday
I went to buy some. I thought the special would be crab salad but they'd been too busy. The special I chose is something my mum cooked often and I have done in the past " half a stuffed marrow with mince and cheese" what a great alternative to potato or pasta.
I've in the past cooked marrow with white sauce as a vegetable but I will definitely use it as a receptical for ameat or vegetarian filling. I have cooked it in the past with chorizo and tomato but are trying to limit processed meat.

 

[Ian Robinson]

Cor I've not had marrow for years

 

[helli]

The only marrow I have had was cooked (and stuffed) by my Mum.
She is a good cook and loves to experiment with flavours. However, she never managed to add any flavour to marrow.
even she gave up woith it and told my Dad to stop growing any in the allotment.

 

[zuludog]

Hmmmm ........ I'm 75 and I don't think I've ever eaten marrow; no special reason, it's just never occurred to me ....and you don't see it very often anyway

I suppose you could do something similar with courgettes in a casserole in the oven, or in a saute pan

I will give it some thought

EDIT - a quick Search of YouTube has several recipes for stuffed marrow & other marrow recipes, and it does look like you could substitute courgettes.

 

[rebrascora]

Anyone who grows courgettes must have had the odd marrow.....ie. the courgette that hid in plain sight until it was far too large and thick skinned to be called a courgette! Stuffed marrow is one of the very few ways I know to make it tasty. You do have to make the filling very flavourful. More like a bolognaise or chilli works better than just mince and veg and cheese in my opinion.
I did also once experiment with making marrow rum, but that wasn't a success much as it sounded like a good idea!

 

[saffron15]

Anyone who grows courgettes must have had the odd marrow.....ie. the courgette that hid in plain sight until it was far too large and thick skinned to be called a courgette! Stuffed marrow is one of the very few ways I know to make it tasty. You do have to make the filling very flavourful. More like a bolognaise or chilli works better than just mince and veg and cheese in my opinion.
I did also once experiment with making marrow rum, but that wasn't a success much as it sounded like a good idea!

The dish was described as bolognaise and was tasty. It came with a tasty side salad of huge variety.The marrows we used as children were courgettes that were missed. I can buy marrow from grocers farm shops and the WI. It has loads of water and can be a bit tasteless. I used to have it as a veg with herbs and white sauce. Large ones are better avoided. I was just pleased to see something in a café that wasn't carb heavy. It was also covered in cheese so not low cal. I'm still trying to eat iron. Having creamed spinach and smoked salmon tonight then two days of crab salad.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Not had stuffed marrow for decades @saffron15 😱

And yes ours were overblown courgettes too.

I wonder if there’s a way to cook it so that it doesn’t go quite so squishy? That was the unfortunate aspect of my memories. More recently I prefer courgette hardly cooked at all so it still has a lot of bite.

Unless it’s those caramelised ones done in a skillet which go all toasty on the outside (but no one liked them in the house but me!)

 

[Docb]

I'm old enough to remember the time before courgettes were invented. Then you only had marrows and they were always stuffed.

 

[silver minion]

I remember learning to make stuffed marrow at school. I modify the recipe now for over large courgettes. Not quite marrow sized but it works fine. I also stuff the small dumpling squashes with a spicy mince sauce.

 

[Leadinglights]

I remember learning to make stuffed marrow at school. I modify the recipe now for over large courgettes. Not quite marrow sized but it works fine. I also stuff the small dumpling squashes with a spicy mince sauce.

I wonder if they wouldn't be as sloppy if you covered the marrow in salt to draw out the moisture then rinse before stuffing with the mince mix.

 

[Robin]

I’m also old enough to remember marrows before courgettes were invented, @Docb ! My mother always stuffed the marrow and roasted it in the oven, so at least it didn’t go even more watery like when you plain boiled it. I have done stuffed marrow with an overgrown courgette @rebrascora . I’m wondering whether i’ll have to do that when we get home from holiday, daughter has been picking, but swore there were only stripey ones, and no plain green…hmmm, we'll see.

 

[Deb_l]

Silly question, did the courgette replace the marrow because it sounds 'posher' I wonder? I remember eating marrow as a child but I think you would struggle to find one in a supermarket now. Courgettes however are on the shelves in abundance.

p.s. I eat a lot of courgettes, not that it really matters, just thought I would over share on this sunny Friday morning

 

[rebrascora]

I wonder if it is a bit like baby corn and mangetout in that people started experimenting with foods where the crop had not fully matured and found that there was a market for them and perhaps then worked on developing varieties which produced better results in the immature fruit and gave them fancier names. I am guessing the French may have been at the forefront of this development since courgette and mangetout appear French although in the US they are of course called Zucchini which sounds more Italian! Courgette definitely sounds more exotic and appetising than marrow and can probably command a higher price as a result. I doubt there is a market for marrow anymore hence not seeing it in the shops.

 

[helli]

Silly question, did the courgette replace the marrow because it sounds 'posher' I wonder? I remember eating marrow as a child but I think you would struggle to find one in a supermarket now. Courgettes however are on the shelves in abundance.

p.s. I eat a lot of courgettes, not that it really matters, just thought I would over share on this sunny Friday morning

I think they are different.
When I was a kid, my Dad had an allotment. Part of the family tradition was sitting down with teh Suttons Seeds catalogue deciding what he was going to plant that year.
In addition to the usual carrots, runner beans, lettuces, broad beans, onions, etc.m my Dad would always chose something different. One year it was Jerusalem artichokes, often it was pumpkins, he tried sweetcorn a couple of times and, through this way, the family discovered courgettes which were definitely different to marrows.

I look back a feel for my Mum. In the time before the internet, she had to delve into cookery books at the library to work out what to do with these weird fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she was successful. Sometimes she wasn't.

As the variety of food we see on the shelves has expanded over the years, I wonder if today's equivalent is the "forgotten traditional seeds." I wonder if today's allotment owner searches through Suttons website (others are available) and choses marrow.

 

[saffron15]

Thinking back to childhood in the sixties we had marrow but never courgettes. I would guess they may be different strains of seed. Marrow contains large seeds. Marrow is larger with a tougher skin - maybe you need a tougher skin for the weight of the marrow. The one I ate had been peeled.
I have seen marrow in supermarkets but not often. However I can buy them homegrown at WI market or at the green grocer or farm shops

When my Dad got an allotment the veg we thought exotic was salsify. My continued favourite is Swiss Chard.

 

[silentsquirrel]

I sometimes use marrow as a cheap filler in my chutney from foraged apples. When we lived in a village could often pick them up for free outside people's gates, but not round here. You can usually get them in supermarkets still, but for a very limited season.
I have memories of eating marrow as a child, usually stuffed with mince, sometimes with cheese sauce. I hated it, very watery even when baked not boiled.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

All this talk of marrows / courgettes reminded me of this rather lovely animated film:

My Life As a Courgette review – if the kids are united...

A young boy is sent to a children’s home in a frank and affecting animation about abused youngsters finding strength through solidarity

www.theguardian.com

 

[Docb]

Eyeballing, suggests to me that 1 marrow is about the same volume as 20 courgettes and with courgettes you can eat the skin. Now if you can sell courgettes at about £1 each, you would have to sell a marrow at more than £20 to make it worth putting on the shelf. Not only that, the extra time and care needed to keep the plant growing whilst the odd courgette turns into a marrow just adds to the price for the marrow.

Who's going to pay £20+ for a tasteless veg when you are, like as not, chuck most of it in the bin? Its a no brainer. Pick the marrows young, give 'em a fancy name, get some celebrity chefs to make over complicated recipes and bingo, you have a marketing opportunity. If you think of it as greengrocer would, the marrow does not stand a chance....except for the odd home grown courgette that has got lost and forgotten under those big leaves and the few that are grown to enter into the biggest marrow contest at the local produce show.

 

[silentsquirrel]

Eyeballing, suggests to me that 1 marrow is about the same volume as 20 courgettes and with courgettes you can eat the skin. Now if you can sell courgettes at about £1 each, you would have to sell a marrow at more than £20 to make it worth putting on the shelf. Not only that, the extra time and care needed to keep the plant growing whilst the odd courgette turns into a marrow just adds to the price for the marrow.

Who's going to pay £20+ for a tasteless veg when you are, like as not, chuck most of it in the bin? Its a no brainer. Pick the marrows young, give 'em a fancy name, get some celebrity chefs to make over complicated recipes and bingo, you have a marketing opportunity. If you think of it as greengrocer would, the marrow does not stand a chance....except for the odd home grown courgette that has got lost and forgotten under those big leaves and the few that are grown to enter into the biggest marrow contest at the local produce show.

Usually just £1 - £2 at Morrisons in recent years!

 

[helli]

I have tried the OddBox delivery a few times.
This is a fruit and veg delivery box made up of items that cannot be sold in supermarkets because they are too big, small, weird shapes, over produced or even taken too long to transport (e.g. grapes from India that were held up when the Suez canal was blocked).
That was the last time I saw marrows. I wonder if these were overgrown courgettes that the farmer needed to get rid of.