This entry brought to you by the letter Z
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Z is for zucchini (and veggies in general)
I freaking LOVE zucchini. It’s definitely one of my favorite vegetables and one of the things I tend to “fall back” on when I’m trying to figure out dinner plans. I’ve made it into zucchini “pie,” roasted it, tossed it in stir-fry, fried it, made noodleless veggie lasagna, topped pizza with it, and turned it into zucchini pancakes. I’ve also had it in soup, pasta, and on sandwiches. To be cliché, I’ve never met a zucchini I didn’t like.
Growing up, I don’t think zucchini was something I ate a lot of. I was never really a picky eater, it just wasn’t something my mom bought very often. As I got older, Mom cooked less, but when she did, one of the things she liked to do was pick up whatever veggies looked good at the grocery store and maybe a pear or an apple. Everything got chopped up and thrown in a skillet until it was hot and lightly browned. That was stir-fry in our house. Sometimes it would get a leftover pork chop or chicken breast added to it, but generally it was just to satisfy a veggie craving. And it almost always had zucchini in it.
Fast forward to my college years. I was dating Adam and he had just moved to Virginia to take a position with the Barter Theatre. The theatre housed its actors and musicians in a dormitory of sorts. Each wing of the building also had a kitchen, shared amongst four to six rooms. Adam decided that this would be a good opportunity to teach himself to cook and I agreed to help. We bought one of those little booklets of recipes that you find in the check-out line and he looked through it to see where he wanted to start.
One of those fledgling recipe tries was something called zucchini pie. It was sort of like a quiche, but with less egg. It was quick and easy to do-prepared crescent roll dough pressed into a pie plate for a crust, zucchini sautéed with garlic and lots of dill (probably my favorite herb to have with zucchini), a little cheese stirred in, and then it gets dumped into the pie plate with some beaten egg to hold it together. Top with more cheese and bake the sucker.
It was good. It was very good. It was also what solidified zucchini in my mind as something I really enjoyed.
The next big zucchini/veggie discovery was at a bar in Dallas. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called (or I’d be visiting them again), but they served amazing veggie fajitas with zucchini, yellow squash, carrot, and mushroom on whole wheat tortillas. So, so simple, but they were fantastic. The veggies were cut into long, wide strips which I would later try to replicate with a mandolin that turned out to be a hunk of junk. So when I make them now, I stand there with a big knife to cut the strips because they’re just not fajitas if I make them with regularly sliced veggies. At least the cooking part is easy-everything just gets sautéed with garlic and seasoned salt.
Nowadays I’m trying to perfect veggie pancakes and hashbrowns. I got a food processor with a shredding blade Christmas before last which makes it a lot easier to do things which require shredded ingredients. Just stuff it through the food chute and it’s done in maybe ten seconds. I’ve made potato latkes from scratch, zucchini pancakes, and butternut hashbrowns. The latkes were amazing. The zucchini pancakes would have also been amazing if I had been able to wring more water of them and get them to hold together a bit better. The biggest hurdle has been avoiding adding flour or cracker/bread crumbs to them as this was a dish I started experimenting with as a low-carb alternative. I stopped doing South Beach and the Insulin Resistance diet awhile ago, but glycemic impact is something I still try to keep in mind and GI-friendly recipes are always welcome in my kitchen. I’ve used egg as a binder, but the last attempt was more mini-frittata than an actual pancake. The butternut hashbrowns were more successful, but butternut is a little two sweet to satisfy my hashbrown cravings. Still tasty though.
Z is for zucchini (and veggies in general)
I freaking LOVE zucchini. It’s definitely one of my favorite vegetables and one of the things I tend to “fall back” on when I’m trying to figure out dinner plans. I’ve made it into zucchini “pie,” roasted it, tossed it in stir-fry, fried it, made noodleless veggie lasagna, topped pizza with it, and turned it into zucchini pancakes. I’ve also had it in soup, pasta, and on sandwiches. To be cliché, I’ve never met a zucchini I didn’t like.
Growing up, I don’t think zucchini was something I ate a lot of. I was never really a picky eater, it just wasn’t something my mom bought very often. As I got older, Mom cooked less, but when she did, one of the things she liked to do was pick up whatever veggies looked good at the grocery store and maybe a pear or an apple. Everything got chopped up and thrown in a skillet until it was hot and lightly browned. That was stir-fry in our house. Sometimes it would get a leftover pork chop or chicken breast added to it, but generally it was just to satisfy a veggie craving. And it almost always had zucchini in it.
Fast forward to my college years. I was dating Adam and he had just moved to Virginia to take a position with the Barter Theatre. The theatre housed its actors and musicians in a dormitory of sorts. Each wing of the building also had a kitchen, shared amongst four to six rooms. Adam decided that this would be a good opportunity to teach himself to cook and I agreed to help. We bought one of those little booklets of recipes that you find in the check-out line and he looked through it to see where he wanted to start.
One of those fledgling recipe tries was something called zucchini pie. It was sort of like a quiche, but with less egg. It was quick and easy to do-prepared crescent roll dough pressed into a pie plate for a crust, zucchini sautéed with garlic and lots of dill (probably my favorite herb to have with zucchini), a little cheese stirred in, and then it gets dumped into the pie plate with some beaten egg to hold it together. Top with more cheese and bake the sucker.
It was good. It was very good. It was also what solidified zucchini in my mind as something I really enjoyed.
The next big zucchini/veggie discovery was at a bar in Dallas. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called (or I’d be visiting them again), but they served amazing veggie fajitas with zucchini, yellow squash, carrot, and mushroom on whole wheat tortillas. So, so simple, but they were fantastic. The veggies were cut into long, wide strips which I would later try to replicate with a mandolin that turned out to be a hunk of junk. So when I make them now, I stand there with a big knife to cut the strips because they’re just not fajitas if I make them with regularly sliced veggies. At least the cooking part is easy-everything just gets sautéed with garlic and seasoned salt.
Nowadays I’m trying to perfect veggie pancakes and hashbrowns. I got a food processor with a shredding blade Christmas before last which makes it a lot easier to do things which require shredded ingredients. Just stuff it through the food chute and it’s done in maybe ten seconds. I’ve made potato latkes from scratch, zucchini pancakes, and butternut hashbrowns. The latkes were amazing. The zucchini pancakes would have also been amazing if I had been able to wring more water of them and get them to hold together a bit better. The biggest hurdle has been avoiding adding flour or cracker/bread crumbs to them as this was a dish I started experimenting with as a low-carb alternative. I stopped doing South Beach and the Insulin Resistance diet awhile ago, but glycemic impact is something I still try to keep in mind and GI-friendly recipes are always welcome in my kitchen. I’ve used egg as a binder, but the last attempt was more mini-frittata than an actual pancake. The butternut hashbrowns were more successful, but butternut is a little two sweet to satisfy my hashbrown cravings. Still tasty though.