Ep 48: Small Bites: Zucchini Magic

Written By Christine Van Bloem

Check out Small Bites, with episodes 15 minutes or less here to teach you what to do to make summer ingredients shine and how to make dinner…fast!

Episode 3 features zucchini, that garden over-achiever, but now with tricks to make it delicious!

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  •  Welcome to the Empty Nest Kitchen, where we're finding fun in the kitchen. Now that the kids have flown the coop, I'm Christine Van Bloem, a cooking teacher with over 25 years of experience here to show you tips, tricks, and joy in your kitchen, all while trying something new. Let's get cooking. Well, oh, happy day. Listen, you knew we were not gonna get through this small bites of summer series without talking about Dun zucchini, because zucchini is kind of the ultimate summer vegetable. I mean, listen, tomatoes a number one. You can go back and listen to my first small bites if you wanna hear about tomatoes or corn. Also delicious, but we know somebody, it might even be you who got a little ambitious, maybe had a touch of success last summer and decided to plant some zucchini. And let me tell you, boy oh boy, do they love to multiply? Let me tell you. But zucchini was never like part of growing up. In fact, we had a dish, no joke, it was called zucchini casserole without the zucchini. And my mom's friend, Janet, made it for us one time. I think it was her. And it was basically a pasta casserole, right? But. Pennsylvania in the seventies and we have not a drop of Italian blood. Right? So it was something, and it had, it was so basic. When I think of it now, it was basically, you know, a meat sauce with zucchini chunks in it and stirred in with pasta and baked. There might have been a little bit of cheese, but I hated cheese when I was a kid, so I'm sure there wasn't very much. Don't worry. I've more than made up for it. But zucchini just wasn't part of things. And I guess my mom didn't like it because if she didn't like it, we never saw it. But zucchini has, it's got some good points going for us. Now, if you are looking to buy a zucchini, if you're not growing them yourself or if you don't have a friend that's growing them when you buy zucchini. You really don't wanna go for those gigantic zucchini, right? Because the bigger they get, kind of the seedier they are. And I always think the bigger ones get, I don't know, maybe a little spon. So I'm always looking for kind of the smaller ones. I like them so that if I'm going to slice them into rounds that it's about the size of, oh, I don't know, like a half dollar. That's what I'm really looking for. I want something that is firm, and again, I think you learned this when we're talking corn and tomatoes. You want something that's heavy for its size. That's important, right? So we wanna go with the smaller zucchinis. Not now. You don't have to buy the little teeny ones, but boy, they are so cute. Especially if you can get the little blossom on the end. Ooh. Was so fancy. But I like, I mean, maybe just kind of a medium zucchini, right? We just don't wanna go too big with them now. If you find one that you missed in the garden that's gigantic, don't worry. Don't worry. There are things we can do with it. But if you are not a huge zucchini fan, and listen, I'm never gonna just saute zucchini and snack on it. But there are so many things you can do that can make this palatable and make it really tasty. In fact, not just for you, but if you have any grandkids meandering around, or even if you're feeling a dip, dip dippy. One of the things I love to do, and I used to do it in summer camps, like every summer we would have a battle. And I was not the kid's parents, so I wouldn't get too hung up on things, right? But I was always trying to introduce vegetables to the kids and I am not a hide the vegetables in things kind of gal, just so you know. I'm never trying to be sneaky. I don't, I don't know. For me it feels dishonest. Like here's a little person that you're trying to get to trust you and you're slipping beets in their brownies. I don't know, maybe I just hate beets. But back to the zucchini. One of the things you can do that's super tasty is slice that zucchini into rounds, and then I love to breadcrumb it, right? So I'll take a little bit of flour. This is called an all and glaze, right? It sounds fancy, but it's totally not. I'll pat the zucchini dry, slice it into rounds, I don't know, half an inch thick. I think that makes sense. I don't peel them. I pat them dry, and then I dip them in some flour that's been seasoned with salt and pepper immediately. Then it goes into beet egg. Then after that, you're gonna chuck it into a dish with Panko crumbs Now. I love to add, like dried Italian seasoning to the Panko crumbs. Very tasty. And you will dip your flowered eggy zucchini ground into those crumbs. Now you're going to use a method called Wet Hand, dry Hand. And what this means is one hand stays dry, and that will be the one that you use to pull it out of the flower to pull it out of the Panko crumbs. And the other one is your wet hand. So that's the one you pick it up with and drop it into the flour. And then as you pick it up. You use the wet hand to move it around in the egg, and so on and so forth. I always joked with young cooks especially that if you mix it up, it, it doesn't matter. You just get something. We called the claw because the wet will cause the panko and the flour to start to adhere to your fingers. It's a little messy, but don't give it a second thought. And what I like to do with these. Is not to fry them. We're we're, we're healthy folks, now we're healthier. So I will give them a spray, a light spray with some olive oil. I have a really nice olive oil that I keep a little spray can next to my. Stove and shout out to the kitchenette in downtown Frederick. They have the cutest little spray balls. I love it. And that way you can put your own stuff in and there aren't any propellants or anything like that in it, but fat is what's gonna help give you that golden brown. So you can even use Pam or a little non-stick cooking spray. I go fancy with the oil but I love to air fry them. And remember, air fryer, I think I say it every week, an air fryer isn't actually frying anything. It's simply a convection oven and it'll get nice and hot. It heats up so quickly because it's so small. But you can absolutely use an air fryer or heck, we used to just do it on a. Half sheet pan that we lined with parchment paper. You can flip'em over halfway if you like. I like a nice high heat. Now my air fryer only goes to 400 degrees. If I'm using regular oven, I might even go 4 25, but 10, 12 minutes until they look brown and crispy. Perfect. Now, I love to dip them in pizza sauce. I always have homemade pizza sauce in the freezer since I got the pizza oven, so I love homemade pizza sauce, or I love marinara sauce. Doesn't matter. It's just, it's a good vehicle for dipping. If you're feeling fancy, do a double dip on it. No, not into the sauce, but you can go back into the egg and back into the Panko for a second time so you get a really nice, thick crust. But that is a great little snickety Snackie if you wanted. You could do zucchini boats. Have you ever seen the zucchini boats? You're going to cut your zucchini in half lengthwise, right? And then when you've got these two halves, you're gonna use a spoon to scrape out the middle. Now do it really gently because we don't wanna break it or do anything like that, but it's usually pretty easy. And then I've done it with ground beef mixture and. Marinara or pizza sauce again, and then a little bit of mozzarella on the top. Pop that sucker into the oven, maybe 3 75. It's not gonna get crispy because we haven't done anything to crisp it up. We're just filling it. Also, make sure once you've got it scooped out, little salt, sprinkle salt, little pepper, and it's gonna be awesome for you. The zucchini will get really tender. Really nice. It looks cool. Zucchini boats. If you look, you will find 10,000 recipes for zucchini boats, and I think that's one, if you like zucchini more, and I know that sounds so silly, but the zucchini's more present in that, right? So you're gonna be gnashing on nice pieces of zucchini. Now let's say that you are a protein baby, right? And you are trying to come up with your protein snacks. Maybe I'm seeing you when I go to the gym to do my weightlifting and you trying to figure out how to get more veggies, more protein into your life. Can we talk egg bites for a second? Egg bites are. The thing because you can take your zucchini and remember we always wanna give it a wash, right? We always wanna give it a wash before we use it. You can take that zucchini and then grade it on the holes of a box grater. Now I like the bigger holes on that, grade it on the holes of the box grater. And what I really like to do then is I get a clean towel woven towel. Not terrycloth. I get a clean towel. I put my zucchini, my shredded zucchini in the middle, fold the towel over it, twist it on both ends over the sink, and you are gonna pull out so much water from it. It's really cool because zucchini has. Super high moisture content, right? And water doesn't brown. So if you can take that zucchini, you can squeeze out that extra moisture. And then I'll take a non-stick pan, add a little bit of olive oil, and we're not going with a really high heat here, like a medium heat. And I will throw in some diced onion. Let that get soft and then. I toss in that shredded zucchini, I might turn the temperature up to a medium high and I'm gonna saute it until that zucchini starts to brown. And as the late, great chef and Barel used to always say, brown food is good food. And in this case, it sure as heck is because here's the thing, by squeezing that voice out, we're letting it brown, right? Because otherwise it's going to. You knew it, it's gonna steam and it's just not gonna have the same flavor profile, little salt, little pepper. And then I like to take that mixture and I make egg bites out of it. Now if you wanna do the soused egg bites, like the fancy egg bites, an instant pot is fantastic for that because it cooks with moisture. It'll do it really nicely. But if you're like me and maybe you have just a, a little bit of, not so much in that, what you wanna do is get a muffin pan and just spray. Each well before you put your mixture in. And then I just take a couple of eggs. Usually I will do like one egg for three wells in that. So if I'm doing 12, I would do three or four eggs, if that makes any sense. Then I would actually do salt and pepper in with the eggs always, and a bit of grated Parmesan cheese. Ooh, so yummy. So I put that zucchini mixture in each sprayed. Well, then I go in and I love to use a liquid measuring cup because it has a spout. Make your life easier. Use the spout. I go ahead. I pour that into each well, and then I might even take just a sprinkle of extra Parmesan cheese and do just a little tiny bit on top. And this again, I'm not messing around with my heat, but you could go maybe 3 75 if you wanted to give that a try. It'll help them get a little brown. About 15 minutes. They are gonna come out. You'll know they're ready. When you look and they are brown and they are puffed, they look like little baby. So flas now, don't be disappointed when you pull'em outta the oven and within a minute they've deflated. You're just concentrating all that yumminess. All right, so you're gonna get it to it'll just deflate naturally after it comes outta the oven. Don't forget, eggs are leave eggs provide lift. Okay, so that's why they'll come out. There's so much liquid in there. It's gonna generate steam. It's gonna give you the puff. They'll sink back down. I will seriously take them, put them in a Ziploc bag, like a freezer, Ziploc bag. I just shove'em into the freezer. If you're going to use'em within a couple of days, fridge is gonna last you about three days. Totally good. Otherwise, use the freezer. And that's it. Look at that. Three different ways to do zucchini, and I didn't even talk about delicious zucchini relish. Oh my gosh. But three different ways to do zucchini. Now you know what to look for and how to make it taste the best. So that's it for this week's small bites. Drop me a line, find me on Instagram. Do whatever you like, but no matter what, I'll see you in the kitchen.

Christine Van Bloem
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Ep 47: Small Bites: It’s Corn; Making the Most of Summer’s Best