Nobody cares about food.

Sid · Jul 22, 2019

Courgette fritters..... one of my favorites.

Courgette pancake fritters

Grate your courgette and add to a pancake batter then fry up these mini veggie patties with chilli dip

www.bbcgoodfood.com

Kamilah Hauptmann · Jul 22, 2019

Beyond Meat burgers are freakishly good. All the taste but not greasy, and most of the texture, superior to real meat lacking any gristly parts stuck between the teeth.

I have them with bacon.

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Mistryl Glyn said:
There's zucchini courgette monsters in my backyard. Thank you for these timely methods of dealing with them. I will venture out back, slay a mighty courgette, then make it melt into submission in the oven, slathered with liberal swaths of onions and parmesan.

** I just looked up crumble. The next zucchini beast's fate is already sealed.

Yep, onions and parmesan (and olive oil, given where I live) is another good thing. Interesting that you can freeze grated zucchini but doesn't it go a bit slimy?

My basic crumble (I don't measure this but I have one in the oven at the moment). Use what seems like appropriate quantities

- Mix of zucchini if you have them (yellow, pale, dark). Cut into small cubes and fry gently in olive with a lot of garlic. Add a little veggie stock and lemon juice, salt and pepper. Cook until the veggies are soft-ish
- For the crumble, roughly equal quantities of butter, parmesan and flour, rubbed until the butter is in smallish, pea-sized clumps. Any sort of grated cheese works too.
- For the carnivores like Mr RL, add some strips of ham or cold chicken to the veggies. Bingo! One-pot meal!
- Cover with the crumble mix and cook for about 20 minutes at 200°C (400F) until the crumble turns golden.
Important (for us) - it's best lukewarm, not straight out of the oven. A little dressing of Greek yoghurt, lemon and herbs is good too.

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Sid said:
Courgette fritters..... one of my favorites.

Courgette pancake fritters

Grate your courgette and add to a pancake batter then fry up these mini veggie patties with chilli dip

www.bbcgoodfood.com

I like those too. Try using half flour, half cornstarch.. They come out lighter, somehow. I add a little sweetcorn and chili to them sometimes. Hmmm... tomorrow's lunch?

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Ava Glasgow said:
It's rudimentary but my favorite is to roast up sliced zucchini with onions. Depending on what we have, I may also add mushrooms and cherry tomatos, and maybe splash a little balsamic on at the end.

And I'm not sure if zucchini bread suits the UK/Euro tastes, but if so, you can freeze shredded raw zucchini for that. One of my dad's clients once gave him several VERY large zucchini that were too mature to be good for anything else, so I shredded them and froze them in 1-loaf portions, then tried a ton of zucchini bread recipes over the next year. It's been a while, but I think this was the winner:

Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

2 cups grated zucchini

3 eggs

¾ cups unsweetened applesauce

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease an 8.5 x 4.5 inch loaf pan (or use a non-stick one).

Stir together zucchini, eggs, applesauce, sugar, and vanilla. Add remaining ingredients and stir well.

Pour batter into loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

ARGH now I have to find my cup measures. WHY DO YOU PEOPLE USE THIS SILLY SYSTEM?

Ahem. Sorry. I have scales that do UK measures and metric but cups? CUPS?

*sigh*

I love you all really.

Kamilah Hauptmann · Jul 22, 2019

Just post in metric and let the medieval revivalists do the conversions.

Veritable Quandry · Jul 22, 2019

Ariadne Korda said:
ARGH now I have to find my cup measures. WHY DO YOU PEOPLE USE THIS SILLY SYSTEM?

Ahem. Sorry. I have scales that do UK measures and metric but cups? CUPS?

*sigh*

I love you all really.

Take a container (a small glass jar should work).
Put it on your scale and zero it out so it ignores the weight of the container.
Add water until it reads 2 ounces. Mark this 1/4 cup.
Add water until it reads 2.66 ounces. Mark this as 1/3 cup.
Add water until it reads 4 ounces. Mark this 1/2 cup.
Add water to 8 ounces. Mark as 1 cup.

"A pint's a pound the world round" (16 ounces of water by weight and volume are the same, therefore 1 oz water by weight=1 oz water by volume).

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Veritable Quandry said:
Take a container (a small glass jar should work).
Put it on your scale and zero it out so it ignores the weight of the container.
Add water until it reads 2 ounces. Mark this 1/4 cup.
Add water until it reads 2.66 ounces. Mark this as 1/3 cup.
Add water until it reads 4 ounces. Mark this 1/2 cup.
Add water to 8 ounces. Mark as 1 cup.

"A pint's a pound the world round" (16 ounces of water by weight and volume are the same, therefore 1 oz water by weight=1 oz water by volume).

This is great but it is ALL TOO COMPLICATED.

Metric. I loves me my metric.

I have found my cup measures. I have also found recipes for banana bread using metric. All options are open.

Btw, it is 40 bloody degrees celsius outside. Meaning 104°F. At 7.30 pm. This is silly. A/C is back, fortunately but still not really baking weather.

Kamilah Hauptmann · Jul 22, 2019

Ariadne Korda said:
not really baking weather

You're in France. You must have at least a half dozen (six in metric) bakeries within five minute walk. Take a parasol.

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Kamilah Hauptmann said:
You're in France. You must have at least a half dozen (six in metric) bakeries within five minute walk. Take a parasol.

We're outside town (town as in 8,000 people) so it's a five-minute drive or a 20-minute each way walk to the nearest bakery (and it's uphill on the way back).

(What is interesting is that desserts from a patisserie - pastry shop (which is not the same as a boulangerie - bakery although some do both) are perfectly acceptable when you're invited out and offer to bring the dessert.)

I am so not prepared to do a 40-minute walk in this heat, nor to get into a car when the outside not-in-the-shade temperature is literally off the scale of our barometer. Nope nope nope.

The crumble was pretty damned good, mind.

Tomorrow is ktipiti with the peppers (from the garden) I roasted in the delicious cool of the A/C. Ktiptiti is utterly gorgeous, although roasting the bell peppersis fiddly (you can get this in jars but hey... we grow 'em).

Here is a recipe IN CUP MEASURES but what is this stuff about oil? You don't need oil. Nor do you need yoghurt. Just the peppers, the feta and the oregano. Is all. Here's a sensible recipe in pounds. Here's an even more sensible one in metric AND cups. This pretty much how I do it.

Right. Going outside. Braving the heat and the mozzies because I feel like a caged bear.

Maggy Hazelnut · Jul 22, 2019

YES, you CAN freeze zucchini! Courgettes or whatever you call them. haha Just shred the zucchini on a grater - preferably small whole zukes after you cut off either end. Put the shredded zucchini into baggies (sandwich bags with ziplock). Press any extra air out of the bag & lay it flat in the freeze. It'll keep for up to 6 months. Then take out & thaw when you want to use it & make delicious banana zucchini bread or muffins. They're wonderful!! I do this all the time. You can also slice or mash & freeze ripe bananas to use for your bread & muffins. I have quite a few bags of bananas & grated zucchini in my freezer right now.

Katheryne Helendale · Jul 22, 2019

Kamilah Hauptmann said:
Beyond Meat burgers are freakishly good. All the taste but not greasy, and most of the texture, superior to real meat lacking any gristly parts stuck between the teeth.

I have them with bacon.

Next time I'm at Carl's Jr., I'll have to give that a try. They've got Beyond Burgers there.

Adriadne: Deep-fried sliced zucchini are to die for! I can never get enough of those.

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Katheryne Helendale said:
Next time I'm at Carl's Jr., I'll have to give that a try. They've got Beyond Burgers there.

Adriadne: Deep-fried sliced zucchini are to die for! I can never get enough of those.

YES. Also. Dipped into egg and then panko breadcrumbs (same with slices of aubergine - eggplant).

Then there's parmigiana blanca with eggplant and ricotta and parmesan and yeah.... look for recipes with the measurements of your choice.

I do it with a LOT of ricotta and cheese and serve it a room temperature. Oh yes. Maybe this weekend as our eggplants are now doing great things (we have the stripey ones, the dark ones and the white ones but the white ones are being devoured by some sort of bug).

Ariadne Korda · Jul 22, 2019

Maggy Hazelnut said:
YES, you CAN freeze zucchini! Courgettes or whatever you call them. haha Just shred the zucchini on a grater - preferably small whole zukes after you cut off either end. Put the shredded zucchini into baggies (sandwich bags with ziplock). Press any extra air out of the bag & lay it flat in the freeze. It'll keep for up to 6 months. Then take out & thaw when you want to use it & make delicious banana zucchini bread or muffins. They're wonderful!! I do this all the time. You can also slice or mash & freeze ripe bananas to use for your bread & muffins. I have quite a few bags of bananas & grated zucchini in my freezer right now.

I will try this, and thanks. Our freezers are a bit full at the mo (blackcurrants, gooeberries, fava beans and a whole lot of other produce). But there's always room for a baggie or two. We can get the ziplock type now and I use them a lot for all kinds of things.

Mr RL has several rows of green beans that are in flower (haricots). This is the next logistical nightmare but they freeze wonderfully well.