The Zucchini Challenge

            Leaving the garden unmonitored for four days in August is bound to cause trouble and it did!  The cucumbers I had been saving for making my dill pickles had gotten rather large and one was easily the size of my fist. But my lovely ridged Italian zucchini, which we have enjoyed in tasty stir-fries, or very young – just sliced with a dab of blue cheese as an appetizer had way exceeded my bounds in size for picking zucchini. They were as long as my forearm!  What was worse, there were several of them!

            This called for some determined action and I gave myself  the  “Zucchini Challenge” to come up with a dinner where every course included zucchini in some form, without being too obvious about it and yet being varied and delicious, rather than a monotonous one flavor deal. It is fortunate that zucchini is so malleable to flavors and can easily be disguised in texture.

So, setting Joe’s restaurant near Lancaster Pennsylvania as my ideal, where everything in the menu contained mushrooms as an ingredient, I set out to design my menu.  Starters: young zucchini slices with a dab of Roquefort and savory Madeleines made with shredded zucchini, Parmesan cheese, flour and eggs. Soup: Creamy zucchini ‘shape-up” soup with zucchini-rosemary-multi seed bread. Main course: zucchini-almond gratin. Salad: bib lettuce-orange sections-thin sliced zucchini with lemony peanut vinaigrette. Desert: hearty cinnamon-raisin-pecan cupcakes, with shredded zucchini substituting for the original shredded apple in my recipe. For anyone feeling that they really missed meat, I would serve sliced ham garnished with thin slices of zucchini twists.

An extra benefit in all these dishes is that zucchini has almost no calories by itself and whenever it substitutes for something else, you save some of those carbohydrate calories.  A wonderful example is the soup mentioned above, which can be served cold or warm, tastes like a more flavorful vichyssoise, but has only a fraction of the calories.

                        Creamy zucchini ‘shape up’ soup

In a 3 quart pot sauté 1 large onion and 1 stalk of celery with leaves,  coarsely chopped in 1 Tblp. olive oil for 5 minutes.  Stir in 1 tsp. thyme, then add 1 unpeeled large pickling cucumber (or seeded regular cucumber) and 1 pound zucchini, all coarsely chopped.  If zucchini has seriously matured, remove the seeds. Add 2 cups buillion and enough water to cover. Bring to boil and cook for 20 minutes until vegetables are soft. Remove from heat and add ¼ cup chopped parsley.  When cooled, add 4 chopped scallions with green part, 1/8 tsp. Tabasco, 3 Tblsp. rice vinegar and process in blender in batches with 2 cups non-fat yoghurt. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper to taste. Serve garnished with chopped red pepper and/or Caesar croutons.

                                    Almond-zucchini gratin.

            This is another recipe that uses a lot of the vegetable.  In a large bowl mix 4 cups coarsely grated zucchini or yellow summer squash with 1 ¼ cups Italian bread crumbs, 2/3 cups grated cheddar cheese and ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese. In 2 Tblsp. butter sauté 1 large chopped onion with ¼ tsp. garlic powder and 1 tsp. thyme for 5 minutes, add in 1 tsp. salt, ¼ tsp. pepper and ½ cup slivered almonds to heat and stir into the zucchini mixture. Turn all in a buttered 8x8 inch casserole. In a small bowl beat together 2 large eggs and ½ cup milk. Pour over the zucchini mixture in the casserole, making sure that it is evenly moistened. Sprinkle with grated sharp cheddar cheese or cover with thin slices of Provolone and bake in 350 degree oven for 40 minutes until top is browned and the filling is set. This dish freezes well and can be reheated.

            Benjamin Franklin is purported to have said: “’Waste not, want not” and I tend to agree if the results can all be delicious.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)

Blueberry Sorcerer’s Apprentice

            The hapless Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Paul Dukas amazing musical portrayal, unforgettably played by Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”, had basically two problems: 1) insufficient planning for completion of the project and 2) too much water! The following tale has similarities in: 1) too many blueberries and 2) insufficient planning for the completion of the project!

            Each year at this time I like to replenish our winter supply of Maine blueberries in the freezer and in the form of delicious syrupy blueberry jam that graces everything from pancakes and waffles to ice cream and pudding. Well, with one thing and another August arrived and I still had not placed my order for a blueberry flat and to my horror found that Beth’s farm market was no longer taking orders, since the season had come early this year (like everything else). However, I was kindly advised to call back tomorrow afternoon, in case they had some extra. To cut a long story short, I called, they had them and of course I got them home.

            Except for two problems.  We still had a houseful of summer visitors. And I had forgotten how large is a 10 pound flat, and I had spoken for two. The following day as our guests were walking out the door, I was already busily filling quart boxes of blueberries for the freezer, since they freeze well unwashed and in the winter a quick thaw in cold water gives you blueberries ready for a pie, muffins or pancakes. The first flat filled all the extra space in the freezer and suddenly the second flat sitting on the kitchen counter gave me visions of Mickey pacing furiously trying to recall the magic that would stop the coming buckets of water being poured in the caldron. My problem was not water, but blueberries that would not quit!  It was time to start cooking.

                                                Natural Maine Blueberry Jam

            Wash and pick over 8 cups Maine blueberries and place in a large stainless pot with ½ cup fresh lemon juice. Bring to boil with occasional stirring. Reduce the heat to medium and with stirring add 7 cups of sugar. It helps to add the first 4 cups, stirring to dissolve and then add the last 3 cups that have been heated in the microwave for 2 minutes to facilitate dissolving all the sugar. After the sugar is fully dissolved, continue to cook on medium heat with constant slow stirring for 25 minutes. Fill into sterilized jars to within ¼ inch from the top and seal with a sterile lid. As the jam cools, the lid will pop indicating that it was vacuum sealed and you can store the jars at room temperature for a year. Often the supply will be eaten long before that time. Since the jam has no pectin added, it is more syrupy than jelly.

            The first batch gave me seven 8 ounce jars and I would have liked to quit, except there were still a lot of blueberries. Unlike Mickey, I had no angry master sorcerer appear and invoke magic to halt the activities. I had to go on!  So, I made the second batch of jam with 8 more jars, after which I was more than ready to call it quits. Except – there were still more blueberries!  My friend the refrigerator, fortunately took care of them until next day, when after breakfast  (with fresh blueberries of course), I baked my husband’s favorite fresh blueberry pie.

            I hope my friends like blueberry jam for Christmas!

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)

SIMPLIFY SUMMER

Simplify Summer!

            To quote Mr. Gershwin: ”Summertime and the living is easy…”. We don’t shovel snow, we don’t have to slog in the mud, the black flies are gone, summer shorts with  tee shirts are the uniform of the day and the blue of Maine summer sky on a sunny day never ceases to amaze and inspire me. 

Our garden is doing beautifully with the early start this spring and the produce has come in consistently with abundance of greens, peas, cucumbers and now beans, summer squash, beets and even a few delicious cherry tomatoes and fingerling eggplant.  However, this litany of homegrown fresh produce successes comes with a price and I don’t mean the weeding. Harvesting is an ongoing process that requires persistence and time to get this bounty to the table or in the freezer for winter.

While I admire and relish each crop in succession, to be honest, it takes quite a bit of work and the concept of “living is easy” seems sometime to get lost.  But one can not live on fresh salads and raw vegetables, although there are food fads that aim to do just that.  So, it is with some reluctance that I admit to taking some shortcuts in my kitchen when summer visitors or events require food. Sometimes home-made does not have to be entirely “from scratch” and sometimes even not from my garden.

Recently a niece introduced me to a cornmeal pancake and waffle mix, It originally produced some very fine blueberry pancakes, but a few weeks later morphed in my kitchen in quite something else: zucchini-Parmesan corn friters that went very well with sour cream and bratwurst as the main part of a supper. The mix I used was Red Mill whole grain mix, but other brands are likely to work as well.

                        Zuchini – Parmesan corn fritters.

Mix together a slightly beaten egg with: ½ cup water, ¾ cups cornmeal pancake mix, ½ tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. onion powder, ½ cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese and ½ tsp salt and a dash of pepper. Fold in 1 ½ cups coarsely shredded zucchini. Heat 1-2 Tblsp. canola oil in a large pan and drop batter by a tablespoon to form slightly flattened fritters. Cook on medium heat about 4 minutes on a side. Drain on a paper towel and serve immediately.

Summer fruit makes a great desert in any form, but sometimes a creamy desert, short of a cheesecake, seems appropriate.  Being rather partial to pies, I recently made my banana cream pie with a summer topping that was as colorful as tasty.

                        Strawberry-banana-cream pie.

Bake a single crust of prepared pie crust in a 10 inch pie plate and allow to cool.  Soften 1 envelope of unflavored gelatin in 3 Tblsp. cold water.  On medium heat cook 1 3oz package of  banana cream pudding with constant stirring in 2 cups of milk to boiling. Stir 3 Tblsp. of the boiling pudding into the softened gelatin to dissolve and add the mixture back to the pudding. Allow pudding to cool about 20 minutes with occasional stirring.  Beat ½ cup whipping cream until soft peaks form, sprinkle with 1 tsp. sugar, continue to beat until stiff peaks form and fold thoroughly into the pudding mixture. Pour about ¼ of the pudding-whipped cream mix in the bottom of the cooled pie. Slice 1 ½ to 2 bananas in thick slices and layer on the pudding. Pour the rest of the pudding on top, making sure that all banana pieces are covered.  Refrigerate for about 4 hours.  Before serving, decorate the top of the pie with halved strawberries alternating with milk chocolate chips. Simply festive and delicious!

“Summertime, when the living is easy….”.  Maybe with a few more shortcuts in the kitchen I may attain that goal of delicious meals with a minimum of energy expenditure.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)