Cocoa zucchini bread

I'm the crazy person who decides to bake something the day before leaving for vacation, when there's already a long list of things to take care of. Why? Well, we had some zucchini left from last week's box, and I didn't want it languishing in our crisper for another week. I had visions of it being shriveled and moldy when we came back. As luck would have it, our friend Ginny had just emailed me a recipe for zucchini bread with cocoa that she'd been trying out with her zucchini down in Connecticut. How could I resist?

A quick word on quick breads: there's something about this type of "bread" that makes it seem easier to make on a weeknight when you're in a rush. This is considered a bread because it's traditionally baked in a loaf pan, and it's quick because it doesn't use yeast as a leavener - instead, it uses baking powder or baking soda (or in this case, both). For me, it feels quick because there's no butter in the recipe - I don't have to wait for the butter to come to room temperature to cream it, so there's no planning ahead involved.

My only change to the recipe? Rather than use a loaf pan I used an 8 x 8 Pyrex pan. My pet peeve with quick breads in loaf pans is that by the time the middle is cooked, the outside can be quite dry. It also takes longer to bake and to cool to room temperature when cooked in a loaf pan. My change of cooking vessel, I suppose, makes it less of a bread and more of a cake - but I like cake, and it has vegetables in it, so why complain?

This recipe came to Ginny courtesy of her fellow carillonneur Paul Butler. Thanks, Paul, for this recipe!

Champlain Valley Fair Blue Ribbon Zucchini Bread
source: Paul Butler

Note: making 1 1/2 times this recipe works well in a 9 x 12 pan

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour (Paul uses white whole wheat)
(for chocolate zucchini bread, substitute 1/2 cup cocoa powder for the flour)
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
3 large eggs
3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups white sugar (you can use 2)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 medium zucchini, grated (about 2 cups)
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a large loaf pan, or 8 x 8 pan. Sift flour, baking soda, baking power, salt and cinnamon together in a medium bowl. (If you're in too much of a rush to sift everything, just sift the cocoa; that can be lumpy.) In a medium bowl or the bowl of a mixer, whisk together eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla extract until light and thick-looking. If using a mixer, switch to the paddle attachment. Add the dry ingredients and mix briefly enough to moisten. Add the zucchini and walnuts, if using. Stir to combine but do not over mix.

Bake about 1 hour until a cake tester comes out clean. If using a loaf pan, the pan will be very full but that's okay - put a cookie sheet beneath if you're concerned about spillage. If you're using an 8 x 8 pan, bake for approximately 40 - 45 minutes. Cool 5 to 10 minutes and turn out onto a wire rack.

Deconstructed deconstructed lasagna

After many days of meaning to make the lasagna tart posted on 101 Cookbooks, I have given up trying to get up the wherewithal to make a tart. (Instead, I've made a sour cherry pie...I can always find the energy to make desserts!) Instead, I took the same ingredients, and made a free-form pasta dish with it. Call it my deconstructed deconstructed lasagna.

Deconstructed Deconstructed Lasagna

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
1/2 onion, minced
pinch of red pepper flakes
2 zucchinis, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 28 oz can tomatoes (whole, crushed, chopped; whatever)
1 cup (or more) ricotta cheese
2 Tbsp chopped basil
salt and pepper to taste

1 pound of pasta (or less - it depends on how "saucy" you want your pasta.)

Boil water for the pasta. Salt the water well, and cook pasta according to directions on package to al dente.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in large, shallow pan. Saute garlic and onion until soft and a bit browned. Add red pepper flakes (more if you like things hot; a pinch just makes things interesting). Add can of tomatoes. If they're whole, mush them up with the back of a spoon. Cook for 10 minutes on medium until bubbling and tomato-sauce looking. Add zucchini; cook through in sauce. Remove sauce from heat; stir in ricotta and basil. Serve with pasta.

This would probably be even more delicious if it were baked (making it a deconstructed-deconstructed-reconstructed lasagna). If I were going to do that, I would undercook the pasta a bit, mix with the "sauce", put in a greased pan, and top with grated mozzarella. Then I'd bake it at 350 degrees until the top was bubbly and brown.

Thai red curry and sichuan green beans

We mixed up our Asian cuisines tonight, going for a Thai red curry and Sichuan green beans. Both would be great vehicles for some of this week's veggies, so why not have them together?

When P and I were in Thailand, our most favorite day of the entire month was a hands-on cooking class in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. We still have the cookbook from that day - it's fallen apart, but we keep jamming the pages back in and hoping we can find our favorite recipes the next time we pull it out. Two of our favorites? Pad thai - definitely not the ketchup-flavored garbage you see in most restaurants in Canada - and curry. But while we've made the pad thai and curry recipes again and again, I believe we tried to make actual green curry paste only once, and red curry paste not at all - it's very involved, and requires many, many ingredients. Instead, we've found a high-quality curry and skip the most laborious step.

Not all Thai curry pastes found in the grocery store are of equal tastiness, however. The best we found is Namjai brand, which is made in Thailand. A nice dollop of curry paste is sauteed in a small amount of oil; then add your meat (or shrimp, or tofu), then the veggies, and then stir in some coconut milk. Add brown sugar, fish sauce, and basil to taste. Tonight, we put in some chicken, a sliced zucchini and white onion. One thing to remember, which we forgot tonight, is that it's necessary to stir constantly and not cover the pan. Otherwise, the fat can separate from the liquid in the coconut milk, and cause the curry to appear somewhat curdled. The taste, however, is still delicious - but you can see some of the curdling in the photo.

My recommendation? Find some of this curry paste (red or green) and keep it in your fridge. We got ours on our last trip to Vancouver, but it must be able to be found in Toronto, too. It keeps for a very long time, and makes a delicious weeknight dinner that you can throw nearly any assortment of veggies into.

Now, these green beans are probably a little less authentic than we'd wanted - but after a day at work, finding a Asian grocery store wasn't on the agenda. This recipe includes things that you're likely to have in your pantry. It approximates it well enough, and maintains the freshness of the green beans while giving them a background of salty (soy sauce) and sweet (the green onions just melt, and the small bit of sugar helps, too). Like the fried rice, bok choy, and green onion pancakes, I'd have these any day of the week as a substitute for lackluster Chinese takeout.

Venison, zucchini, & potatoes

The centerpiece of last night's dinner was a delicious piece of farm-raised venison purchased at the Brickworks on Saturday. And who knew when I purchased the meat I was being trendy? (Probably some of you food-lovers out there, but not me.) Check out this article in the National Post on farm-raised venison in Ontario. The recipes at the end of the article sound delicious - but we went a simpler route.

When it's raw, venison looks a bit more like an organ meat than typical beef steaks, I believe because it has less fat running through it. This, of course, is good news for the nutrition-conscious: it's lower in fat than beef (and has other benefits, too, I'm sure). It was also an interesting purple-red color - again a departure from beef, and more akin to the color of beef liver.

Undeterred, I did as the venison farmer suggested and got out my grill pan, heated it on medium-high, and sprinkled it with fresh-ground pepper and kosher salt. A couple minutes on each side produced a lovely, rare piece of meat with flavorful searing where the grill ridges hit the steak. Yes, it is possible to grill meat indoors.

On the side: sauteed zucchini from the CSA share, and a boiled red and Yukon gold potato with butter and dill from our balcony garden. I had meant to use the garlic scapes with the zucchini, but just plain forgot; the couple I have will be used this week with any additional ones we accumulate.

All in all, this was a successful week of using up the produce. There are soup and calzones in the freezer, and everything else (other than the scapes, some green beans, and cabbage - all still usable) were eaten. I'm feeling very full of vegetables!

Tired Sunday night dinner

After what was a longer trip shopping for glasses than we expected (P will have new glasses in 10 days!), we dragged ourselves home and thought about dinner. The sesame soba noodle salad that I'd planned to make just sounded like too much thinking for that particular day, and I'd used up all of the cucumber in the salad the night before, so we switched gears.

Here's what we ended up with: a "what's in the fridge?" stir fry, and steamed pork dumplings from the freezer. Yes, I would have preferred to make my own and freeze them, but this was not to be this time. The stir fry was a tasty way to use some of the soba noodles, and would be great with many permutations of vegetables.

"What's in the fridge?" stir fry

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp garlic
1 1/2 tsp ginger
1 zucchini
1/2 bunch of bok choy
2 tsp soy sauce, or to taste
2 tsp fish sauce, or to taste
1 bundle of soba noodles, cooked
cooked chicken (we had some leftover from earlier in the week)
green onions, white and green parts

Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok. When very hot, add the garlic and ginger and keep moving for 30 seconds, until it's fragrant but not burned. Add the zucchini; cook until it starts to soften slightly. Add bok choy; when it begins to wilt, add the soy sauce and fish sauce. Add the cooked soba noodles; stir so flavors are distributed throughout. When everything looks cooked enough, add the cooked chicken and green onions. (If you were to use raw chicken, add this after the ginger and garlic, but before the zucchini, and cook mostly through. The rest of the cooking time will allow it to be fully cooked.)