I have a look at what it's producing every day. Mom tells me time and again to "pick them when they're small". Trouble is, when I look they're too small ... finger size. When I look again, they're too large ... say submarine size.
I would have to check the garden at 3 am to grab a zucchini that's the perfect size.
That said, the goal we've had for the past couple of weeks has been how to use all the zucchini that single plant is producing. Mom makes a delicious zucchini casserole. It was wonderful and probably my favorite zucchini dish. I love zucchini cooked simply. We've done that, many times. I even eat slices raw as a salad. Today we decided on a basic recipe for baked zucchini slices.
Here's how the finished product looked. To see the recipe I used, click here
The recipe calls for "2 medium zucchini". Before you go looking for one, I can save you some time. There's no such thing. Zucchini are either small (if just past the bloom stage) or too large (if you've delayed in harvesting them more than a few hours. But, never mind. We used what I picked and we followed the recipe as best we could.
Our zucchini may have seeds but they are nearly transparent and hardly noticeable. The interior flesh is snow-white and of a very even texture.
Two of our zucchini produced enough slices (even though we cut most of them thicker than the prescribed (1/8"-1/4") to fill a cookie sheet and another round pan to boot. The slices shown above are ready for the oven: they've each been dredged through melted butter (margarine, actually) and oregano, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper added.
Mom added parchment paper to the cookie sheet (it's already non-stick) to save clean-up time. I added the slices directly to the metal pan. No problem in either case.
Here they are ready to bake. Mom served as butter-melter, zucchini-slicer and pan-preparer. I did the rest.
Bottom line: I'd prefer something breaded and browned. I turned the oven broiler on high for a few minutes at the end of the 40 minute bake time. This gave the zucchini a little gold on their tops. I may have pinched a bit too much pepper, too. The zucchini had quite a bite and there is no other ingredient that could have done that.
Still, this is a way to use up extra zucchini and it beats throwing them out.
At this point, Mom would not agree.
I love my zucchini as soup, cooked in a bit of water with onion, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper, then pureed with a little cream. Great with buttery croutons! Did you ever try to eat/cook the flowers?
ReplyDeleteNope, never tried that but I've had others suggest it. Gosh knows, there's plenty of flowers. Most abort and don't form squash. All this from ONE plant!
ReplyDelete