I told myself I wasn’t going to give you yet another recipe for zucchini bread. Until I made this one. Filled with dried apricots and flavored with orange, it reminds me of my mother’s long lost banana bread recipe that I have been unable to replicate. When my daughter Abby came home and raved about this bread I knew I had to share it. It starts with my basic Olive Oil Zucchini Bread Recipe . Olive oil, maple syrup and brown sugar are beaten together in a bowl until they are mixed. Add eggs, vanilla and orange extract and beat it together until it is emulsified (it ...
Search Results for: zucchini bread
WITH THE BEST OF INTENTIONS: OLIVE OIL, LEMON AND GINGER ZUCCHINI BREAD
I started this week with the best of intentions. I thought that everyone must certainly be tired of Quarantine Baking so I planned to write a blog about something meaty, maybe something on the grill, something far removed from bowls and ovens and flour. Then I went out the garden and found the zucchini had decided this was the time to begin. Even then, my intention was not to start with zucchini bread just yet. I thought I would collect a number of recipes and then do baker’s choice for you all. But that was before I tasted this zucchini bread. This zucchini bread is moist, super ...
GAD ZUCCHS! (Part 1): OLIVE OIL ZUCCHINI BREAD WITH CARDAMOM AND DATES
I have such a conflicted relationship with zucchini. I have read countless tales of neighbors passing off the excesses of their zucchini crop to one another. I have seen beautiful expansive plants in my friend’s gardens. I have lusted after their zucchini blossoms and loved the gifts of zucchini bread. How hard, therefore, can it be to grow zucchini? Harder than you would think, at least for me. The first year, my plants never made it past a few feeble blossoms before developing a mold that had them brown, shriveled and goopy. The second year I moved them into raised beds and watched ...
Sweet Zucchini Pie
A big zucchini calls for a big idea. How about a pie? Flavored with cinnamon and ginger, it is like an Apple Pie. But not. It's a Sweet Zucchini Pie! If you grow zucchini then, almost without fail, at some point you will end up with an oversized fruit (more on the fruitiness of zucchini later). Then, if you are like me, you will make zucchini bread in endless iterations , stuff the zucchini, make zoodles and fritters all summer long until you don’t want to even think about zucchini. But have you ever made a zucchini pie? I have. And it was so good I am purposely letting a ...
WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS? STUFFED ROUND ZUCCHINI SQUASH!
I picked up my first CSA box (Community Supported Agriculture—it’s a farm share) yesterday from Bush-n-Vine, a nearby farm. It was a good one: early tomatoes, some sweet late strawberries, lettuce, Swiss chard, and these guys. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what they were at first, but it turns out they are round zucchini. Who knew such a thing even existed? And that’s all they are: round zucchini. No unusual flavor, nothing different except the shape, and the shape is so much fun. These little guys were begging to be hollowed out and stuffed. Which is what I did. I ...
Spiced Tomato Bread
My crazy summer continues. I have been doing a LOT of traveling and really enjoying myself as I explore new cities and places, and their food. I realized that while I have traveled around a lot of the world, it has been a long time since I visited many of the cities in the United States. So it has been a treat for me to do some travelling in the United States. You can follow my travels on Instagram @awomancooks and on this blog in The Adventures of an Asheville Cook. This week I returned from Cincinnati (Graeter's Ice Cream and Montgomery Inn BBQ Ribs) to find a massive number of lovely ...
ZUCCHINI, TOMATO AND MOZZARELLA BAKE
Zucchini “Bake”—it’s such an inadequate and clunky term for delicious layers of squash, fresh tomatoes, and lovely gooey melted cheese flavored with olive oil and salt and just a touch of balsamic vinegar. There has to be a better word! Summer is in full swing and my garden is working overtime producing fresh tomatoes and zucchini. SOOOO much zucchini! I am still at the beginning of my zucchini craze which is when I happily eat it sautéed, in salads and roasted. Shortly the glut will become overwhelming and I will need to resort to other cooking methods (along with a box on the ...
CORN, TOMATO AND ZUCCHINI MUFFINS, DON’T FORGET THE CHEESE!
A friend recently asked me why I grow vegetables and get a CSA share from my local market. It’s a fair question. But for me the two things serve completely different functions. My CSA share stretches me. Left to myself I would spend the whole summer eating my holy trinity of vegetables: tomatoes, corn and zucchini. I would, and do, walk happily by the produce shelves loaded with greens, root vegetables, and other less favored foods straight to my go-to’s. I can’t do that with my CSA. The dang things are in my home! In my refrigerator right now are Japanese eggplants, radishes ...
OVEN ROASTED ZUCCHINI WITH FRESH TOMATO SAUCE: HOMAGE TO THOMAS KELLER
“ZUCCHINI IS JUST A MAGNIFICENT VEGETABLE”—CHEF THOMAS KELLER I love Thomas Keller. Seriously, he may be my secret celebrity crush. I am taking an online course of his on MasterClass and his passion for the most simple of vegetables and the purest methods of preparation is just riveting. Mastery of a profession combined with sincere appreciation of its tools may be one of the sexiest things ever. So, I love Thomas Keller. Zucchini, on the other hand, I have mixed feelings about. It’s hard to rave about zucchini. We grow it (or at least some people successfully grow it). We cook it ...
On Aging, Blueberries and Glimmers
I am getting old. But so are a lot of people around me, including a lot of newspaper columnists I have been reading for years. Which is nice because from time to time they write something I can really relate to. Like this column from Charles Blow In it, he talks about the choices one can make as one ages: not about getting older, we have no real choice in that. But about how to come to peace with the process. I encourage you to read it. If you are older, it may speak to you. If you are younger, it may bring some understanding. One of the things he said, that I try to do every ...
