this post is brought to you by: zucchini!
Inexplicable forces influenced me today. The results? Zucchini night! I knew I was going to cook something for dinner tonight, but I wasn't sure what it should be. I have lots of options thanks to my grocery shopping the other day, but what to fix??? A new issue of Everyday Food showed up in my mailbox the other day. I flipped through it for inspiration and found a few things that I wanted to make sometime soon. But one thing in particular caught my attention; a feature on ricotta cheese. Now I have to admit, ricotta has never been my favorite type of cheese. I will eat it and enjoy it if it's in a dish, but I tend to push the excess to the rim of my plate and pretend I don't see it. So, seeing it featured in the magazine led me to wonder if I wasn't missing out on something, and I considered the possibility of trying to gain a new appreciation for it. They had a recipe for eggplant-ricotta bake that looked really good. Basically it is eggplant lasagna without the noodles. I love eggplant lasagna, but I didn't have any eggplant. I could have purchased eggplant, but that would have defeated the purpose of using things I'd already gotten. So, I decided I would substitute zucchini for the eggplant and add ground beef and mushrooms (since I needed to use those things as well eventually). Once I decided what I would have for dinner I continued to browse around food related things, and I found another recipe that looked good which also called for zucchini. It was this recipe for Chocolate and zucchini cake. My mom used to make great zucchini nut muffins when I was a kid, and I haven't had them in ages. This wasn't quite the same thing, but it sounded good, and I've seen other similar recipes that have gotten great reviews. I briefly contemplated my options and made a decision: I would have a zucchini night!
I made the cake first so it would have time to cool before dinner. It was really easy, very similar to making the carrot cake. Once again I was very happy to have my food processor to grate the zucchini instead of trying to do it by hand. My original plan was to follow the recipe exactly, but when I started getting out the ingredients I realized that I had a problem...all my baking lately has seriously reduced my supply of flour and sugar. This is a completely normal thing to have happen, but it just hadn't occurred to me that I might need to buy more of those things soon - oops! I wasn't deterred though, after my carrot cake success I knew that it would be fine to add in whole wheat flour and sub out some of the sugar to make up for the lack of granulated sugar and all purpose flour. Mixing the two types seems to work great, I'm glad I figured that out before. So, I made that change to the recipe and then I used half walnuts and half pecans because I didn't want to pick one and I added a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips as another recipe said it was fun to do. Oh, I also added some orange extract to the glaze at the end so it would bring out the slight orange flavor in the cake, this seemed to work well. Here are my cake pictures:
I went from this
to this!
In the meantime, I got started on my actual dinner. The recipe said to roast the eggplant for a while before you layered it all up with the other ingredients, so I figured I should do this with the zucchini as well. This worked out pretty well, but I didn't have to cook the zucchini as long as I would have needed to if it was eggplant, so I had to adapt to that. Also, the zucchini was skinnier than eggplant would have been, so I had to allow for that too. I made up my own layering pattern and basically made a mess cause it was too much trouble to try to do everything neatly with a spoon. Also, while I was layering everything I was on the phone with my Dad who was telling me about everything he's been doing in Washington D.C. it was definitely a juggling act. Anyway, I got it all together well enough and popped it in the oven. 20 minutes later I had a really great dinner entree. Despite the not so beautiful looks, it tasted great. I even ate all the ricotta in my portion! In fact, I decided that I really do like ricotta after all, I've just had it in dishes where the flavors were not properly complemented and it put me off. This will give you an idea:
Fresh out of the oven! The top layer was nice and bubbly.
Trust me that it tastes better than it looks. And, I promise there are tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, and spinach in there, it is not all cheese like it looks. I liked not having the noodles in it, it was a nice change and you could taste all those vegetables that you can't see from the picture. I would have gotten a better picture, but someone called me right as I was taking this one, and I didn't have a chance to go back and redo it. Anyway, I really enjoyed this with a small salad, and there are plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
Now for the exciting part: dessert! I couldn't eat much of my zucchini bake because the cake was sitting right there on the counter the whole time tempting me.
As you can see, I had it with some fresh berries that I got today. This ended up being a great idea because it all went nicely together. I know this picture doesn't make it look that pretty either, and the glaze is glaring, but what it lacks in presentation potential it makes up for in taste. Like the carrot cake from last week, this cake is extremely moist! As the people at One would say, "We rate it excellence." I was trying to decide whether I like it or the carrot cake better. The carrot cake was very very good (you saw Michelle scraping her plate clean when she tried it) but this is good too. I decided that they really can't be compared despite the fact that they both have vegetable components. Chocolate and zucchini are undeniably different from carrots and raisins anyway, right? I like both of them, and I wouldn't hesitate to make either one again. But I don't need to make anything else right now, because there is still lots of chocolate cake left to be eaten! I should know better than to bake when I am the only one here. Fortunately every one will be back soon and I won't have to eat the whole cake myself.
So, the lesson for tonight is that zucchini is a versatile vegetable and is a perfectly worthy evening theme.
The second lesson is that I should be less enthusiastic about cooking and more conscientious about what I'm doing with my hands. I managed to zest one of my fingers when I was washing off the zester and then later I pressed my pinkie up against the hot burner and burned my finger. Could have been worse, but these were not happy things, I need to pay more attention.
I made the cake first so it would have time to cool before dinner. It was really easy, very similar to making the carrot cake. Once again I was very happy to have my food processor to grate the zucchini instead of trying to do it by hand. My original plan was to follow the recipe exactly, but when I started getting out the ingredients I realized that I had a problem...all my baking lately has seriously reduced my supply of flour and sugar. This is a completely normal thing to have happen, but it just hadn't occurred to me that I might need to buy more of those things soon - oops! I wasn't deterred though, after my carrot cake success I knew that it would be fine to add in whole wheat flour and sub out some of the sugar to make up for the lack of granulated sugar and all purpose flour. Mixing the two types seems to work great, I'm glad I figured that out before. So, I made that change to the recipe and then I used half walnuts and half pecans because I didn't want to pick one and I added a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips as another recipe said it was fun to do. Oh, I also added some orange extract to the glaze at the end so it would bring out the slight orange flavor in the cake, this seemed to work well. Here are my cake pictures:
I went from this
to this!
In the meantime, I got started on my actual dinner. The recipe said to roast the eggplant for a while before you layered it all up with the other ingredients, so I figured I should do this with the zucchini as well. This worked out pretty well, but I didn't have to cook the zucchini as long as I would have needed to if it was eggplant, so I had to adapt to that. Also, the zucchini was skinnier than eggplant would have been, so I had to allow for that too. I made up my own layering pattern and basically made a mess cause it was too much trouble to try to do everything neatly with a spoon. Also, while I was layering everything I was on the phone with my Dad who was telling me about everything he's been doing in Washington D.C. it was definitely a juggling act. Anyway, I got it all together well enough and popped it in the oven. 20 minutes later I had a really great dinner entree. Despite the not so beautiful looks, it tasted great. I even ate all the ricotta in my portion! In fact, I decided that I really do like ricotta after all, I've just had it in dishes where the flavors were not properly complemented and it put me off. This will give you an idea:
Fresh out of the oven! The top layer was nice and bubbly.
Trust me that it tastes better than it looks. And, I promise there are tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, and spinach in there, it is not all cheese like it looks. I liked not having the noodles in it, it was a nice change and you could taste all those vegetables that you can't see from the picture. I would have gotten a better picture, but someone called me right as I was taking this one, and I didn't have a chance to go back and redo it. Anyway, I really enjoyed this with a small salad, and there are plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow.Now for the exciting part: dessert! I couldn't eat much of my zucchini bake because the cake was sitting right there on the counter the whole time tempting me.
As you can see, I had it with some fresh berries that I got today. This ended up being a great idea because it all went nicely together. I know this picture doesn't make it look that pretty either, and the glaze is glaring, but what it lacks in presentation potential it makes up for in taste. Like the carrot cake from last week, this cake is extremely moist! As the people at One would say, "We rate it excellence." I was trying to decide whether I like it or the carrot cake better. The carrot cake was very very good (you saw Michelle scraping her plate clean when she tried it) but this is good too. I decided that they really can't be compared despite the fact that they both have vegetable components. Chocolate and zucchini are undeniably different from carrots and raisins anyway, right? I like both of them, and I wouldn't hesitate to make either one again. But I don't need to make anything else right now, because there is still lots of chocolate cake left to be eaten! I should know better than to bake when I am the only one here. Fortunately every one will be back soon and I won't have to eat the whole cake myself.
So, the lesson for tonight is that zucchini is a versatile vegetable and is a perfectly worthy evening theme.
The second lesson is that I should be less enthusiastic about cooking and more conscientious about what I'm doing with my hands. I managed to zest one of my fingers when I was washing off the zester and then later I pressed my pinkie up against the hot burner and burned my finger. Could have been worse, but these were not happy things, I need to pay more attention.
posted by Erin at 12:37 AM
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