Zucchini

Here is a great recipe that my wife got from the Harrowsmith cookbook. She is still tweaking it and will post her final version when done. In the meantime she says that her variation is to omit the orange rind, and add instead 1/4 - 1/2 tsp cardamom. The last cake she made, which I served at our weekly CSA pickup since it was made with zukes from our CSA Saffire Farms, she even added 1/2 cup of teff (an Etheopian grain) for the extra nutrition -- it added the teeniest little crunch, which was rather nice. She has also used up to 2.5 cups of zucchini in this recipe and it has worked fine.

The kids love this stuff - even after knowing it has so much zucchini in it. Indeed, you'd never guess. It simply tastes like a really awesome chocolate cake.

There we go, the sauce is finally in the canner! This is definitely not a sauce for someone who does not like a lot of work since it takes a good 2 or 3 days to make. First of all, it contains a lot of roasted red pepper, which itself takes a good day of work. Though I roasted about twice what I needed for this recipe and canned the rest. Hmmm, note to self : I still have not written the article on roasting peppers, so please stay tuned for that. Last year was the first year I used roasted red peppers in my Pasta / Pizza sauce, and I liked it so much that I'm doing largely the same thing with a few tweaks.

The biggest difference between this year and last year is that this time around I wanted to use up some zucchini from our CSA, so I decided to toss a good sized one in there. I also have a 2 or 3 pounds of heirlooms tomatoes in there this year as well - just to use up ones from the CSA. I did not measure either, but I did measure another zucchini that was about the same size, and it was 650g. Heirloom tomatoes about 2 or 3 lbs - together after cooking it down for about an hour they made up exactly 2 litres of puree that went into the main sauce.

This year we were looking for a bit of a change in how to use up Zucchini, and a bit of googling hit upon this recipe for relish. A quick read and it sure sounded yummy - and now that it is in the jars I can verify that indeed it is! It is one of those recipes you have to prepare a day in advance since the veggies soak in brine overnight - somewhat counterintuitively so as to be able to get much of the water out of them. Of course, a fruit press like this one that my wife bought me for Christmas a few years ago helps in that goal too, but you can do it the old fashioned way by squeezing handfuls of the mixture.

For chopping the veggies I used a manual food processor with a crank handle on top. We hadn't used it in years mainly because it had gotten put away somewhere out of view, but when my wife was going to sell it at a yard sale in the spring I set it aside because I knew I'd use it again. It made fairly quick work of the veggies as long as I only about half filled it. The zucchini alone was literally about the size of my leg from the knee down! I did a double batch of this recipe.

Bread and Butter Pickles are a very popular treat to make in many households when fall harvest is upon us, but darnit they can be a real pain to make! Especially the part where you have to squeeze all the water out of the cucumbers that have been sitting on ice - last time we made them was before I had my little fruit press so my hands were pretty numb by the end of it. There is thankfully none of that foolishness with Zucchini Pickles! So much easier to make, and taste just about identical to Bread and Butter. And everyone is always giving away Zucchini in the fall, so even better still!

This is a yummy “cleaning out the veggie drawer” sort of soup. It’s lentil based, but uses pretty much whatever veggies you happen to have on hand. I’ve made it most often with zucchini because we buy an annual share in a CSA, and what farm doesn’t have too much zucchini in late summer? This is a great one to get going in a slow cooker, too, and reheats really well from leftover.