Zucchini fritters

I've been keeping a bit of news from you - I start a new job on Monday! My time off (aka "funemployment") is officially coming to an end. I'm ready for it though - the job is in public health, which is a field I have been wanting to enter for a while, and I'm really excited about it. Anyway, I bring this up because even though I sometimes wonder if I have too many cookbooks, I still bought myself two more to celebrate getting the job offer. One of these was Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. Ever since our trip to Turkey, I've been very interested in exploring the food of the Middle East, particularly the mezes.

The first recipe I decided to try was for Turkish zucchini fritters. Shredded zucchini and onion are mixed with herbs and feta cheese to make the batter, and then the fritters are pan fried. These fritters have a thin crisp crust, but are very soft and melty on the inside, due to the cheese. I especially love the addition of mint to the batter. For those of you looking for new ways to use up a bumper crop of zucchini, give this a try!

Grilled summer squash with garlic, anchovies, and capers

I went to New York City last weekend to visit some family and friends. Before I left, I grabbed a tupperware of leftover pasta, and at the last minute, added some of this grilled summer squash to the container. Let me tell you, I was pretty excited about the gourmet lunch I was going to eat on the bus ride to the city. However, as soon as I boarded the bus and settled in my seat, I realized that while my lunch would certainly be delicious, it was also the smelliest possible thing I could have chosen to bring with me on a bus. Garlic and anchovies? Seriously, what was I thinking? I didn't dare open the container while I was on the bus and ended up waiting till about 3pm to eat it. Not all food is bus-appropriate - lesson learned.

Anyway, as long as you're not planning on eating this in an enclosed space with very little air circulation, you should give it a try! It's delicious, and would make a perfect side dish for a summer party or cookout. I love the flavor of grilled vegetables, and the dressing here makes this something special.

Turkish-inspired zucchini-yogurt spread

Andrew and I returned home on Saturday after two truly wonderful weeks in Turkey. Before this trip, we hadn't taken a trip together that was longer than 4 days in the last several years (including our honeymoon, or "minimoon" as I like to call it). So we knew that we had to do something special during my time off after graduation! We spent 5 days in Istanbul, saw the ruins at Ephesus, then spent some time on the coast in Fethiye and Antalya. I still can't get over how warm the water in the Mediterranean is!

Of course, the food was a big highlight of the trip. We ate freshly caught fish, grilled and dressed with nothing but a squeeze of lemon, accompanied by Turkey's national drink, raki (anise-flavored liquor). We tried countless versions of kebabs, and enjoyed one particularly memorable meal of pide (Turkish pizza). We loved the Turkish breakfast that we had every day - bread, fresh cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, fruit, yogurt, eggs, served with honey, butter, and jam. In the afternoons, we often stopped to re-energize with a Turkish coffee. We indulged in sweets - Turkish delights and baklava - and fast food too, like fried mussels and doner (meat cooked on a spit) sandwiches. We saw fruit trees everywhere, and ate fresh oranges, apricots, peaches, watermelon, and cherries.

Personally, there were two aspects of the cuisine that I found very inspiring - mezes and yogurt. Mezes are small plate dishes, usually served as starters, and they are often vegetable-based and served cold. The main dishes were heavy on the meat, so I got most of my vegetables through the mezes. Even the most simple ones, like green beans in olive oil, were delicious, and I loved trying a sampling of what each restaurant had to offer. You can count on seeing a number of meze recipes appear on the blog this summer, using plenty of local produce. As for yogurt, it was great to see the number of ways that it was used - mixed with vegetables or herbs in mezes, served alongside tomato sauce on top of sliced meat and bread, and used as a sauce for stuffed pasta - all so good! I love yogurt, and I am definitely going to expand the number of ways that I use it now.

The recipe that I am sharing with you today is a meze that includes yogurt. I found a great blog of Turkish recipes and I made a variation of a zucchini-walnut dip I found there. I'm not really sure if what I made counts as traditional Turkish, so I'm just calling it Turkish-inspired. It's great served with pita or other bread, especially when it's hot out!

Quinoa veggie bowl with tofu and peanut-miso sauce

I have a confession – until recently, I didn’t like quinoa very much. Gasp! I hope this doesn’t ruin my credibility as a healthy(ish) food blogger. I guess I tend to prefer heartier grains and felt that quinoa was kind of….bland. However, a recipe for a quinoa/rice/veggie bowl in last month’s issue of Food & Wine caught my eye and put quinoa in my head. I tossed some ideas around for a while, and eventually decided to combine quinoa with toasted coconut, add some zucchini, broccoli, and tofu, and drizzle with a peanut-miso sauce. A little avocado on top made the dish complete, at least in my avocado-obsessed mind. I loved this healthy meal, and something about quinoa in this context just worked well for me. I’m definitely opening up to the idea of cooking with quinoa more often now!

What is your favorite quinoa recipe?

Zucchini carpaccio salad

It is finally time for me to introduce you to my favorite summer salad! I am the kind of person that almost never repeats recipes, because I always get distracted by new ones that I "need" to try, but I like this salad so much that I make it several times each summer. For me, summer hasn't really arrived until I can get arugula and zucchini at the farmers' market and make this. I first ran into this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen. The salad is simple - arugula and paper-thin slices of zucchini, with lemon juice, olive oil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese - but it is so, so refreshing and delicious. A mandoline slicer definitely makes it easier to cut the super thin zucchini slices, but a vegetable peeler will work in a pinch. 

Zucchini carpaccio salad

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4-6

3 large zucchini (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 pound arugula, stems discarded and leaves cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 cup coarsely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (about 1 oz.)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of one lemon
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cut zucchini crosswise into paper-thin slices. Toss zucchini in a colander with 1 tsp salt and allow to drain (in the sink or over a large bowl) for 20 minutes. Rinse zucchini well and pat dry with a kitchen towel or paper towels.

In a large salad bowl, toss arugula with 1/4 cup cheese, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1 1/2 tbs olive oil. Arrange zucchini slices over arugula, drizzle with remaining 1 1/2 tbs olive oil and lemon juice. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheese and pepper.

Salad is best served immediately.

Spaghetti with zucchini, almonds, and lemon

This dish is something that I've been wanting to make for several months. In the early fall, I got the idea to julienne zucchini lengthwise into long, thin strips and toss them with spaghetti, lemon, nuts, and Parmigiano. I went to the farmers' market all excited to try it out...only to find that zucchini had gone out of season that very week. So I resigned myself to the idea that I'd have to wait until next summer to make the dish.

However...I've recently decided that for the winter, I'm going to expand my definition of local food to include ingredients that are produced regionally - that is, anywhere on the East Coast. This gives me some more variety in vegetables, although I'm still buying as many Massachusetts-produced ingredients as I can. I'm also still buying all my produce and meat from the farmers' market so that I have a connection with the people that grow the food, even if the food is coming from a different part of the East Coast. One of the vendors at the local winter farmers' market sources produce from Florida, and they were selling zucchini this week, so I decided to finally try making this dish!

I was really happy with how this came out - it is a simple but tasty, and I liked the effect of the zucchini and spaghetti being the same shape. Even my zucchini-hating cousin happily ate a big bowl of it for dinner tonight! I'd say this was worth the wait, although I hope my recipe ideas are better timed in the future...

Zucchini sweet potato bread

This is my favorite quick bread recipe, and happily, both zucchini and sweet potatoes are in season right now! I first came across this recipe on Joy the Baker, and I've modified it to use white whole wheat flour, and also cut down on the sugar, because I don't like quick breads to be too sweet. This bread is hearty, moist, and flavorful, and makes a great breakfast...or afternoon snack...or dessert. And though I wouldn't exactly call it healthy, I think wholesome is an appropriate description. Enjoy!

Ratatouille ragu

This dish is a great way to celebrate summer's last hurrah. It's packed with late summer produce, so hurry up and make it while you still can! This was inspired by a gnocchi appetizer that Andrew and I had at Highland Kitchen, a great restaurant/bar in Somerville. The gnocchi was topped with a really flavorful mix of roasted veggies, which we immediately decided to try and replicate at home.

This "ragu" (not technically a ragu, since it is meatless) is versatile, and soooo good. Roasting the veggies intensifies their flavors, and the herbs bring everything together. Cooking-wise, this is pretty simple, but it does require a good amount of chopping. We have enjoyed this over gnocchi and pasta, and I think it would also be good with polenta, or with rice, or as a topping for toasted bread, or stuffed into a pita...lots of options. You could also mix in some white beans if you want to add some protein.

This dish is just so summery and delicious - I hope you enjoy it. With the heat wave in Boston right now, it's hard to believe that it's September already. Fall veggies are coming soon...

Zucchini stuffed with goat cheese

Ever since I started blogging, friends and family have been generously giving me fresh veggies from their gardens or CSA shares. Naturally, I love it, but I do have to get creative finding ways to use it all. In particular, I have had quite a lot of zucchini to use up, a problem that many of you gardeners probably can relate to. I can always grate and freeze them if need be, but for now I'm trying to use them fresh.

I found this recipe in Vegetarian Cooking and Vegetable Classics, a book that my mom gave me a couple years ago. The zucchini is stuffed with goat cheese and slivers of mint, wrapped up in foil, and baked - nice and simple. I thought the recipe looked good, but needed something more, so I paired it with tomato sauce, which worked nicely. It made a nice light vegetarian main course, perfect for a summer evening with a glass of wine.

This will work best with small, slender zucchini that will cook quickly when left whole. I used goat gouda for the cheese because its easier to work with than soft goat cheese, but you could definitely substitute your favorite cheese here - I bet parmagiano or cheddar would be good choices...

Summer vegetable frittata

A frittata makes a nice quick dinner (or brunch), and can easily be adapted to use whatever ingredients you have on hand - this is a great way to use up odd bits of vegetables you might have in the fridge. This one included zucchini, tomatoes, and bacon and was based on a recipe from Gourmet Today (seriously, this book is amazing). I made a bunch of substitutions with the ingredients, and really liked the resulting combination of flavors. You can certainly adapt this recipe to accommodate your taste, and a vegetarian version without bacon would be delicious as well. I'd love to hear about any variations you try!

This frittata is packed full of vegetables and isn't too eggy, which is quite nice. It is a bit watery because of the zucchini and tomatoes, but that isn't really a problem, just something to be aware of. The recipe below includes a couple tweaks that should help fix that. Also, the cheese topping is really tasty, but was a bit much for me - I'll probably cut down on the amount next time.

Summer succotash

This dish is a perfect example of the idea that foods that are in season together taste good together. Creamy beans, sweet corn, and crisp-tender zucchini, topped off with some fresh tomatoes and herbs - if you think of succotash as something that comes from the freezer section, it is time to think again. Succotash has been in my mind ever since I saw Deb's post about it, and I decided to try a version from Alice Waters's book, The Art of Simple Food. Alice Waters is an authority on local, seasonal cooking, and her recipes are a great place to find some ideas and inspiration. This book is one of the first places I look when I don't know what to do with a particular vegetable.

This was my first time trying fresh cranberry beans, which I used instead of the traditional lima beans. I used a leek instead of onion, because I had a leek that had been sitting in the fridge for two weeks, and desperately needed to be used. I hadn't originally planned on using tomatoes, but I got a bunch of cherry tomatoes from my mother-in-law and made a last minute decision to toss them in there. The tomatoes were a great addition - they add good color as well as some nice acidity. Overall, this is a beautiful way to use the produce that is overflowing at the markets these days.

Zucchini with almonds

This is another one of those recipes that takes the simplest ingredients, and transforms them into something unexpected. I came across this one on Smitten Kitchen, which is my favorite food blog. The julienne cut of the zucchini is essential here, because the toasted almonds get caught among the zucchini strands. I've tried cooking veggies with almonds before, but the almonds inevitably fall to the bottom of the dish, no matter how much I toss the mixture -- that is not a problem here. The julienne is no problem if you have the right tool, but I imagine it would be a real pain with just a knife. The original recipe has the option of adding cheese, but I think it's better without.

(If you are curious, next to the zucchini in the photo is sauteed pea tendrils with radishes - yum)

Zucchini with almonds
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, original post is here

The amounts are really variable here -- any amount of zucchini and almonds will come out fine, so adjust to your taste.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons thinly sliced almonds
1 to 2 small zucchini, cut into 1/8-inch matchsticks
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oil on high heat in a skillet. When it is hot but not smoking, add the almonds. Cook them, while stirring, until the almonds are golden-brown, approximately a minute or two. You want them nicely toasted and crunchy, but not burned, obviously.

Add the zucchini to the pan, tossing it with the oil and almonds until it is just heated through, about one minute. The short cooking time is important here -- you want the zucchini to retain some crispness.

Add salt and pepper to taste.