What To Do With All That Zucchini: Two Unusual Recipes

Recipes for Zucchini Carpaccio & Zucchini French Fries

Zucchini is notoriously prolific.  If you planted it this year, you're probably rolling in it by now and wondering what to do with it all.

The time honored way of disposing of excess zucchini is to leave it on a neighbor's doorstep, ring the doorbell and run away. 

But if you'd like another way to prepare it for your dinner table, I'd like to offer up two very different recipes that provides relief from the fatigue of steamed, grilled, stuffed or sauteed zucchini.

Recipe #1 Zucchini Carpaccio

Carpaccio is an Italian dish made of thinly sliced raw beef served with a vinaigrette and some grated Parmesan cheese.  I'm not really a fan of traditional carpaccio, but it was the inspiration for a vegetarian version of the dish created by my wife Sharon.  This recipe is easy to make, quick and is definitely a different approach to zucchini.  Here's how you make it....

Ingredients:

• Zucchini
• Olive oil
• Shredded or grated fresh Parmesan cheese
• Fresh or dried thyme
  
• Salt & pepper

Instructions:

• Preheat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit on broil.
• Thinly slice zucchini so that you have rounds that are about 1/8" thick.  The ideal tool for this is a mandoline, but if you don't have one, you can use a knife.
• Place some aluminum foil onto a cookie sheet and lay down a row of thinly sliced zucchini so that they overlap each other like fish scales. Lay down another layer of zucchini in the same fashion overlapping each other and the first row.  Continue doing this till you use up all your zucchini.  You should end up with a large rectangle of overlapping zucchini rounds.
• Drizzle the top with olive oil and add a few pinches of fresh or dried thyme, salt and pepper.
• Sprinkle some fresh shredded or grated Parmesan cheese on top.
• Place into the oven for just a few minutes.  Because the zucchini is thinly sliced, it should cook in just a few minutes.  You want the cheese on top to bubble and start to go brown. 
• Serve using a spatula to remove the zucchini from the pan. 

Below is a photo of the dish made with a Zucchino Rampicante, a crookneck variety that I've posted about previously.  Since this squash is so thin, I cut the zucchini into long thin strips, rather than rounds.  The presentation is not as nice as the overlapping rounds, but still just as tasty.

The crispy, warm, salty Parmesan cheese on this zucchini makes for a really yummy and unusual side dish.

Recipe #2 Zucchini French Fries

This second recipe is more what you might call "comfort food."  It is the same preparation as with traditional French fries but you use zucchini in place of potatoes.

Ingredients:

• Zucchini
• Peanut Oil
• Salt

Instructions

• Cut your zucchini into thin strips.  (You can do this with a knife, but it is much easier to get consistent sized fries if you use a french fry cutter; this is a device which pushes a whole potato through a cutting plate to create thin, rectangular slices.)
• Heat your oil to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.  Ideally, this is done in a deep fryer, but if you don't have one, you can do it in a frying pan.  You just want the oil to be high enough in the pan that it will cover the fries.
• Dump a small batch of zucchini slices into the oil and cook for about 3 minutes.  Remove from pan or fryer and set aside in a bowl. Do this for all of the zucchini slices.
• Increase the temperature of your oil to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Re-fry small batches of the partially cooked zucchini for 1 minute.  This second frying at a higher temperature will result in really crispy fries.  Repeat till you've re-fried all the zucchini.
• Salt and serve.

As with traditional French fries, zucchini fries are a great side dish for hamburgers.

Comments

[Lemon Mousse]

Feel like Having This rite now...
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Viva-Magazine-Your-Premium-Womens-Natural-Health-Magazine/262734921452?ref=ts

[Mark Delman]

Hi Lemon Mousse! Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

[Dawn]

Grilled zucchini brushed with a little butter and sprinkled with season salt is also very simple and delicious. Slices are great but take up a lot of grill space, so I often cut small zucchini into four wedges length-wise and just lay them on the grill. Luckily I don't grow zucchini or I'd also be making a lot of zucchini bread for the freezer!

[H. Mark Delman]

Thanks for the suggestion. My god these zucchini just keep coming. Were blanching and freezing them for later in the year. You can only eat so much of the stuff.