Oven Crisped Zucchini

I am always looking for new ways to make zucchini, since it is a popular vegetable with the picky eaters in the house. We first started our love affair with the dark green squash with restaurant zucchini fritti. Of course we love that one – deep fried zucchini topped with Parmesan cheese – but I am not going to make it at home. As I have mentioned before, I have never deep-fried anything and when I do it is going to be a doughnut, not a vegetable.

The latest recipe is our attempt to mirror restaurant zucchini fritti without the deep fryer. Restaurant zucchini usually has some type of coating, though not a full breading. I have seen recipes for using egg and breadcrumbs to bread the zucchini, but I don’t want to put that much work into a side dish, and I don’t like to disguise a vegetable quite that much. I settled on dredging the slices in flour with a little added garlic powder and salt.

I used my new mandolin (thanks to Rich’s mom) to slice the zucchini the long way. I am already looking for other things to slice. When I asked for the mandolin for Christmas I thought maybe I was indulging myself too much, since I already have a food processor and not a lot of cabinet space. But I love my new tool and am already thinking of new things to slice.

Our attempt to make oven baked zucchini fritti was a success the first try. We had it again last night and I think it will become a part of the side dish rotation, at least until we think of another new zucchini recipe.

Download or print recipe here.

Oven Crisped Zucchini
From The Cook’s Life
Serves 2-3

2-3 tablespoons olive oil, approximately, divided
½ cup flour, approximately
garlic powder
salt
2 medium zucchini, sliced vertically into long, thin slices
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese, approximately

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease two baking sheets with olive oil and set aside.

Mix flour with a few shakes of garlic powder and salt. Dredge zucchini slices in the flour to lightly cover both sides. Don’t make the coating too thick. Arrange coated zucchini in a single layer on baking sheets. Drizzle slices with additional olive oil.

Bake zucchini for 10 minutes. Remove sheets from oven and turn slices over. Drizzle with a little olive oil if slices seem dry. Return pans to oven for 5 minutes. Remove any browned, crispy slices to a plate and return pans to oven for less crispy slices to finish cooking. Watch carefully at this point, as the zucchini can get too brown in no time.

Serve hot, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

Parmesan Crusted Zucchini Chips

Last night’s dinner was supposed to be tilapia cooked with squash and tomatoes, but I just wasn’t in the mood for that when it came time to make dinner. I decided on tuna sandwiches, but I needed something to round out the meal beyond potato chips (boring and not at all nutritious) or a salad (nothing was washed or chopped).

We had zucchini that I had bought for the tilapia, so I decided to do a variation on the zucchini “chips” we have been making for a few months. I have seen recipes for breading the zucchini before baking, but I absolutely didn’t want to take the time and effort to dip each slice of zucchini in egg and then bread crumbs. I decided on a Parmesan cheese crust. The results exceeded my expectations by a long shot. And the recipe couldn’t be easier, as long as you stay in the kitchen to avoid last minute burning (and I speak from experience – though I only lost a few slices).

Parmesan Crusted Zucchini Chips
From The Cook’s Life
Serves 2-3, easy to double

Try to make just what you are going to eat in one sitting. These lose all their crispness upon storage, but they are still tasty.

2-3 zucchini, depending on size, they cook down quite a bit (I used 2 for 3 servings)
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt, optional
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (not the powder in the green can)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a large baking sheet, or two smaller ones.

Slice zucchini into thin rounds, about 1/8-inch, or as thin as you can. The thinner your slices, the crispier they will get. In all reality, unless you have the knife skills of a chef, or use a food processor or mandolin, you will have slices of varying thicknesses. They will all be delicious, though some slices will be crispier than others.

Arrange the zucchini slices on the prepared baking sheet(s) in a single layer. You can overlap the edges a little, since they will shrink. If you end up with some paper-thin slices, double them up so they don’t burn. Try to keep the thinner slices toward the middle of the pan and the thicker ones at the edges.

Drizzle zucchini with olive oil, but don’t drown it. Sprinkle very lightly with salt, if using, and bake for 15 minutes.

Remove them from the oven and turn each slice over with tongs. This will seem tedious, but do it or the bottoms will burn. Sprinkle the slices with the grated cheese and return to the oven. You may not use all the cheese – save the leftovers for topping at the table.

Check the zucchini every five minutes or so, and remove the slices to a plate as they get brown. Don’t wait for all of them to get crispy or you will end up with some black and inedible pieces. After 15 minutes of additional cooking, all the slices should be soft, most of them will be crispy, and the cheese will be starting to brown and crisp. Arrange all the chips on a platter or plate, in one layer so their steam doesn’t make them soggy. Scrape all the crispy cheese off the baking sheet and add it to the platter. Serve immediately.

Download the recipe here.

Sweet Potatoes – Not Just for Thanksgiving

In our house, sweet potatoes appear on the menu just about every week year round. When you have a picky eater, you serve the vegetables he will eat as often as you can. I also like sweet potatoes a lot, and since I cook and plan most of the meals, sweet potatoes play a starring role around here.

My favorite way to make them is to bake them until they are very soft and slightly caramelized on the bottom. And I discovered that I really like peeling them and mashing them before we sit down at the table, instead of slicing open, mashing and doctoring on our plates.

Note how the leaking liquid is caramelized and the skins are shriveling a bit – you know they are soft and cooked all the way through, with nice brown bits on the bottoms. Yum!

To take it a step further, I started making spiced sweet potatoes, based on a recipe from the Bahama Breeze restaurant. I have no idea if they still exist, but I do know the one location in St. Louis closed several years ago. We found the recipe for their sweet potatoes online, but it included an entire stick of butter. While I love butter, I would rather not consume all of my weekly allowance in one formerly healthy side dish. And they boiled their sweet potatoes, which to me leaves out a whole taste dimension from the caramelized potatoes. Not to mention, you have to peel and cut up the raw sweet potatoes. Why do all that when it is so much easier to peel them after they have already baked? And you can work on the rest of dinner while they quietly bake in the oven.

Ready to mash.

We backed off on the butter (and sometimes leave it out totally) and doubled the cinnamon – if you are making spiced sweet potatoes, make them spiced. I don’t know when I thought of adding the cayenne, but it really makes the dish. It boosts the bite of the cinnamon without make the dish too spicy. I added the vanilla to give the whole thing a little more warmth and another layer of flavor.

Be sure to post how you change the recipe to suit you and your family’s tastes, or if you make it just as written.

Spiced Mashed Sweet Potatoes
from The Cook’s Life 

All of the measurements are approximate, but make sure you use more cinnamon than you think you need. And don’t leave out the cayenne – it gives that “something” that makes the dish.

3-4 medium sweet potatoes
1-2 tablespoons butter (optional)
½ teaspoon vanilla
1½  teaspoons cinnamon
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Salt
Brown sugar for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking pan with foil, or use a non-stick pan (save yourself the scrubbing from the leaking sweet potatoes). Scrub the sweet potatoes, prick them with a fork or sharp knife and bake on prepared pan for 60-90 minutes, or until they are leaking from the pricks and are soft to the touch. All the better if the liquid that leaks out and the bottoms of the sweet potatoes are caramelized (burned).

Let the potatoes cool for 10 minutes, so you can handle them more easily. Split each sweet potato’s skin, which will be easy because skin usually puffs above the flesh a bit. Scoop the flesh out with a spoon or, if the potato is cool enough, pick it up and squeeze it out into a bowl. Add the butter, if using, the vanilla, the cinnamon, a couple of dashes (or three or four) of cayenne, several grinds of black pepper and a pinch of salt. Mash and mix with a fork or potato masher and serve while hot. Pass the brown sugar at the table. These also reheat beautifully.

Download the recipe here.