Zucchini Palooza - (by Guest Blogger Claire Doris)

In case you haven't heard, we have zucchini overload here at Dorisdale Farms!!!

In a comment made by Peter, you can tell who is making dinner here by the vegetables served. If dad makes dinner, there is an 85% change that we will be eating corn on the cob, but if Mom/Claire/Maggie make dinner there is a 100% chance that we will eat some form of zucchini!

Some of the many forms of zucchini consumption this so far have been:

- in a zucchini, tomato, cheesy skillet

- baked with Parmesan as fries

- zoodles (zucchini noodles) with spicy thai peanut sauce

- grilled chicken spaghetti with zucchini, tomatoes, and Dorsidale farm garlic scape pesto 

- barbecued zucchini

- puff pastry zucchini tart

- zucchini scrambled eggs

- zucchini chips

- zucchini latkes

- zucchini/sweet potato/potato pancakes

- zucchini as a pizza topping

- zucchini as a pizza base

- zucchini rice Parmesan gratin

- grilled zucchini boats

- baked zucchini boats

- butter fried zucchini flowers (at the suggestion of one of our customers!)

Even after eating all of this zucchini, I didn't think that we had reached our maximum levels of zucchini consumption. Can we use zucchini in everything? I'm doing my best to test that theory. 

As one of the resident bakers here at the Doris household, I have been on a zucchini loaf and zucchini muffin kick. Before going to a friends cottage for the August long weekend I experimented with zucchini oatmeal muffins and carrot zucchini muffins (which actually ended up actually being the fan favourite much to my surprise!)

Here is the Carrot Zucchini muffin recipe: https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/carrot-zucchini-muffins/ (I made a quadruple batch and added chocolate chips - didn't want to be too healthy. One of my next recipe ideas is to make a carrot zucchini muffin recipe with applesauce - three times the fruits/veggies, three times the fun!)

After talking at the corn table to a neighbour on Friday, Mom made the comment that we hadn't gotten to the point in the year yet where we had covered zucchini in chocolate. I took it upon myself to remedy that on Saturday afternoon.

I asked Liam to go out to the shed and grab me a zucchini. The one he brought in to me could be described as the size of a tree trunk. Using our food processor, I quickly shredded enough zucchini to overfill our colander - not an easy task (probably close to 15 cups worth of shredded zucchini). I knew that I had my work cut out for me. 

The first recipe I decided to make was a classic zucchini spice loaf. I chose to make one using melted butter instead of vegetable oil, and boy, was it ever tasty. The 9x13 in pan had almost disappeared within 2 hours, so I actually made another batch of this recipe in 2 loaf pans (to freeze for when we go through zucchini withdrawal this winter!). Here is the recipe: https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/zucchini-bread.html (Note - I used two heaping cups worth of zucchini - probably closer to 2.5/3 cups worth (can you ever have too much zucchini? I am doing my best to test those limits, but in this case it turned out really well. I did let some of the liquid drip out while the zucchini was in the colander but didn't use salt to dehydrate the zucchini or fully wring it out. Finally, I only added in chocolate chips, but know it would be delicious if I had also used walnuts/pecans).

Since the first loaf taken from Once Upon a Chef turned out well, I decided to make their recipe for chocolate zucchini loaf as well (https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/double-chocolate-zucchini-bread.html). This one used brown sugar instead, and really packed a punch full of zucchini - the recipe called for the same amount of zucchini despite only making one loaf worth. Surprisingly, we might actually prefer zucchini flavour full on here at the Doris house, not disguised with chocolate, however it was still quite good and we recognize that this is a classic way to use up zucchini.

With a tonne of shredded zucchini left to use in the colander, and a half a zucchini sitting on the island from making zucchini pizzas (zucchini slices covered with tomato sauce and cheese, then broiled) for lunch, I turned to Google to see if there was any other inspiring recipes out there (if you were to look through my recent Google search history, about 98% of the results are zucchini recipe based). 

While looking through a slideshow of "17 Zucchini Desserts That'll Make Everyone Want to Eat Their Veggies", I found a recipe that surprised even me, an avid zucchini consumer. Recipe #17 on the list was for Zucchini Cobbler. Could this be real? Was someone playing some kind of a practical joke? I decided to investigate further. The recipe had an average review of 4.5 stars, and most people seemed to say that it was indistinguishable from an apple cobbler. I figured that we had enough zucchini that even if the recipe was a flop, at least it could serve as a cautionary tale to all other zucchini fiends out there. 

I made a few modifications to this recipe. It calls for 8-10 cups of cubed zucchini, but instead I used 3 cups of cubed zucchini, 5 cups of shredded zucchini, and 2 cups of tart frozen Ontario cherries so I could argue that at least some traditional fruit was used. This was heated in a pot with 2/3 cup of lemon juice, a half cup each of white and brown sugar, and some cinnamon and nutmeg. The recipe said that the mixture would be thin, but I think the shredded zucchini and frozen cherries released some extra moisture so I used 3 teaspoons of cornstarch as well to thicken the fruit mixture. I baked it in a 2 quart dish. I also halved the amount of base/topping.

Overall, it was actually quite yummy! The cubed zucchini really is quite similar to an apple chunk (although the shredded zucchini kind of gives it away), so I would use only cubed zucchini next time. The cobbler was still quite runny, so I would use more cornstarch so it is the desired thickness before you put it in the casserole dish to bake it. I would use a larger pan to bake it in, the dish I used was too small to handle all of the zucchini and we had some bubbling overflow (I had put the dish on a tinfoil lined baking sheet, so at least the oven wasn't a burned mess). I do think that it was more than enough crumble topping, so I would recommend making half of the recipe. 

The cobbler went over pretty well at the Doris household! Maggie and Liam both thought that it was quite similar to apples, Dad said "I'd eat it again" (to which I replied - "Oh don't worry - you will!"). Ella, as the most skeptical zucchini eater in the Doris household, said that she is going to get zucchini toxicity poisoning. Overall I consider that to be a success! :)   

The rest of the shredded zucchini was used for lunch today to make zucchini/potato pancakes. Next up - for dinner we are planning to make zucchini lasagna. Mom will be working soon on zucchini relish and zucchini sweet pickles. Let us know if you have any other zucchini recipes for us to try out (tested favourites or unconventional ideas welcome)!

I think the main takeaway of this story is: Be cautious of any dinner invitations to the Doris house!