Is that a zucchini in your pocket...

...or are you just happy to eat with me?

The other week I mentioned a home-grown, pesticide-free courgette, courtesy of a colleague. Notice the singular? It wasn't a couple of squash it was one. See the spoon in the photo? That's a teaspoon. The veg in question was a 1.13kg (roughly 2.5 lb) beauty. Yup, it was a biggie.

A couple of chocolate loaves later and I was still up to my knees in zucchini (remember I am almost 5'1"). If the weather were cooler, they'be be roasted in some ratatouille and if I had a barbecue, I'd have grilled off some slices for a warm salad. But it was too warm for the oven and I don't have a barbecue. So I did the next best thing...I fritterised them.

Let's face it, there are worse things that could happen to a veg...I mean, they could be boiled to within an inch of their lives: any and all vestiges of flavour and inherant goodness they once contained are dissipated in a cafeteria worker's cooking pot.

Or they could be dehydrated and pulverised, mixed with a load of salt, polysyllabic preservatives and colourants to justify the "made with real vegetables"-type monicker on certain foods.

Fritters are incredibly easy--mix veggies into a batter and drop by the spoonful into a pan with about two to five centimetres of hot fat. Let the underside burnish and then flip over and fry the other side. Lift out of the fat (salt if you wish) and drain onto kitchen towels. Then eat while warm.

Curried Courgette Fritters
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
salt
pepper
1 tsp curry powder (or more or less, depending upon taste)
1 egg, beaten
450g courgettes, grated and drained of excess liquid
1 medium onion, grated and drained of excess liquid
oil, for frying

Heat the oil until it shimmers.

In the meantime, sift together all the dry ingredients, stir in the egg and fold in the grated courgettes and onion.

Drop by teaspoonful into the fat-flatten each drop out a bit so the centres will cook through. Don't crowd the pan otherwise the oil's temp will drop and then soak into the fritters, making the greasy and leaden. When the underside is burnished, turn over the fritter and fry until it too is a lovely golden brown. Remove from the oil and blot on kitchen towelling.



Normally when I have fritters I eat them plain or with ketchup or barbeque sauce. With this batch I decided to pair them with a very garlicky home-made aïoli. It was good in theory...and eventually in practise. My first batch of fritters, while practically perfect, were paired with a very imperfect garlicky dipping sauce. It just didn't come together: it was lumpy and bumpy and separated far too quickly.

So I tried it again, about a week later, with a new batch of fritters (from yet another mutant zucchini). This time, I wasn't in the best moods when I made the fritters and well...you could tell. The fritters were thin and scraggley and seemed to take forever to cook regardless of how warm the oil got. I lost several because they absorbed so much oil, their edibility was in question.

The aïoli, on the other hand, turned out beautifully--thick and unctious and very, very garlickly. It's quite easy to make--it's quite similar to making mayonnaise. You can make it by hand with a whisk or with a blender (stick or jug versions).

Garlic aïoli
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 egg yolk
125 ml olive oil
125 ml canola oil (or other flavourless oil
salt
pepper
1 dspn mashed potatoes

Whisk together the yolk and the garlic. Drizzle in the oils while constantly whisking, to thicken the sauce. Whisk in the mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.


cheers!
jasmine

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