Savour the Seasons: Courgettes

I remember when I was a teenager--sometime between 14 and 16 years--my parent's garden provided a plethora of courgettes. I asked my piano teacher if she wanted some--her eyes lit up accepted. The following week I arrived with a shopping bag of carrying several kilos of squash. The week afterwards she gave me two loaves to take home.

The next week I arrived with a double load of zucchini (my parents insisted) and she looked...umm...bemused but accepted them.

The next week I had one more bag of veg and she mused aloud about home gardeners overrun with zucchini...I stopped bringing her courgettes that year.

It's not as if my parents weren't aware of the rabbit-like proliferation of zucchini, but something was obviously amiss in their patch that summer.

I can't pinpoint the exact reason why I prefer yellow courgettes to green ones, but I do. Not sure if I've convinced myself of its superior flavour or the colour is just so happy-endorphin making I can't help but gravitate towards them. Unfortunately this year my neighbourhood mediumcarymegamart doesn't seem to have a lot of them...I counted ONE a couple of weeks ago...so I bought it....even though I knew it was about to go off in a day or two (no, I didn' t get around to using it before it met its sad ending).

Sigh...

Anyway, I was blessed with a home-grown, pesticide-free zucchini, courtesy of a colleague (yes one zucchini. More on that in a post or two from now). Determined to not let it go the way of its sole yellow cousin (difficult that, since it was so perfectly ready), I did the first thing that came to mind...a chocolate loaf.

No, my chocolate tooth hasn't returned...but zucchini really, really wanted to be paired with it...I couldn't say no. And isn't a sign of a good cook is her ability to listen to what the ingredients tell her to do...and then do whatever it is...within reason?

Well, it was within reason.

I figured I could easily get get two loaves out of it--which was good because I so desperately wanted to give my most wonderful web designer something as partial thanks for trying to fix my SensualGourmet.ca site, which I broke by trying to be creative and interesting. It's still not 100 per cent, but it's MUCH better than it was a couple of weeks ago (and yes, my Canadian Bloglist update won't happen until the pages are fixed properly..too afraid of breaking it again). Yeah...if you want to break anything, just give it to me...I'm good at that...and I won't even realise what I've done (blush blush blush).

This recipe is quite easy and filled with choco-zucchinified goodness. It's very moist and quite tasty (if I do say so myself)...and it makes enough batter to fill two seven-inch loaf tins.

Chocolate Zucchini Loaf

275g sifted plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
150g semisweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled slightly
125ml flavourless oil
2 eggs
150g sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
125ml milk
300g zucchini, grated (large holes on a box gater) with as much water squeezed out as possible

Preheat oven to 160C/325F; butter and sugar two 7" loaf tins.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt.

In a separate bowl, mix together the melted chocolate, oil, eggs, sugar and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and the milk to the mixture in alternating additions. Fold in the zucchini.

Divide equally between two prepared tins. and bake for about 50 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

cheers!
jasmine