Zucchini Mechshie with Tamarind & Prunes

Zucchini Mechshie with Tamarind & Prunes

I’ve talked a lot about mechshie (a Syrian dish of stuffed vegetables) on my blog, especially around the holidays. I decided to keep up the tradition, and for the third year in a row, I’m sharing a stuffed vegetable recipe in honor of Sukkot. The tradition of eating stuffed foods on Succot is symbolic of an abundant harvest season. Since the wheat is harvested in Israel during the fall, we stuff foods to symbolize our desire for an overflowing harvest. This is popularly done with stuffed cabbage, or holipches, which some say are also made to resemble the scrolls of a Torah.


Ever since I married into a Sephardic family, I can’t get enough of my mother-in-laws delicious mechshie dishes! I’m slowly learning to cook different variations, adapting my favorite recipe with the additions of tamarind, pomegranate molasses and different types of vegetables and dried fruit.

When I spotted beautiful globe zucchini in the market, I just knew I had to turn it into some kind of mechshie. The small, round zucchini were perfect for filling, and I decided to work in some tamarind paste, an ingredient essential to Sephardic cooking. It adds a hint of sourness to the sweet dish, a perfect pairing with the plump dried prunes.

So let’s get stuffin’!

More Mechshie Recipes:

stuffed baby eggplant mechshie
zucchini and tomato mechshie “ratatouille”

More “Stuffed” Recipes:

corned beef arancini
Passover stuffed cabbage (replace potatoes with rice)
collard stuffed sweet potatoes
sausage and apple stuffed butternut squash
spinach stuffed mushrooms
stuffed chicken roulade
Israeli stuffed eggplants

Post a Comment

24 thoughts on “Zucchini Mechshie with Tamarind & Prunes

  1. Hi, this is NOT Sephardic but middle eastern food. We the Sephardim indeed do stuffed vegetables but not this type in particular.
    If your husband’s family are immigrants from Syria or Lebanon or Iran or Iraq, they are not Sephardim. They are Mizrahim although they are mistakenly called Sephardim.
    Chag Sameach!

  2. IF I don’t have time to find tamarind sauce or can’t find with a hechsher, can I replace with anything else? This looks delicious!!

    1. Hi Renee, you can try with pomegranate molasses. It’s got tang like tamarind, I think it could work. Just taste the sauce to see if it needs more sugar, or start with less molasses. You can also leave it out altogether, it’s still really good without it.

  3. Hello Chanie! We had sent you an inquiry for collaboration on August 24 but did not receive any reply from you. So we have sent it again since it might have gone to your spam box. We would greatly appreciate if you get back to us and tell us what you think about our offer. Thanks!

  4. Made this for shabbat lunch and my husband almost fainted he liked it so much! Made a few minor tweaks (less sugar, tamarind, and prunes; am in an ottolenghi state-of-mind so i added buccarat, and was out of tomato sauce so i added canned tomatoes + onion + garlic & onion salt) and we enjoyed with a cold, bitter bazelet ale. it was a complete meal in itself!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *