Sunday, July 11, 2010

Zucchini Bread

I was recently at a farmer's market in Boulder. I always love going to a farmer's market, but I admit that I am usually a little disappointed in Colorado farmer's markets. They are always a little too heavy on bread and meat, and too light in actual produce. Often there is produce from out of state...a vendor may shout enthusiastically, "fresh from California!" Not exactly the point. This particular one had a fair amount of local produce, including lettuces, green garlic, and zucchini.

I bought an obscene piece of zucchini. It was about a foot and a half long and about three inches in diameter. You could probably cause some serious damage with it if you wanted a weapon. In any case, it was not suitable for small children to see. It was the biggest one in the basket, and the moment I spotted it, I knew it would make at least a double batch of zucchini bread.

I do not like zucchini much on its own. Occasionally in a ratatouille or veggie lasagna, and of course, fried, but that doesn't really count. I once had a fantastic pasta dish made by a friend who had recently gone to Italy. I have no idea what was in it, but it seemed to be only zucchini, olive oil and parmesan cheese. I have tried to replicate it to no avail.

But I make a pretty mean zucchini bread. Some recipes I've found are more like zucchini cake. Cake is nice, but if it's going to feature a vegetable, I'd prefer it to be more healthy than not. I don't feel this way about, say, chocolate cake. You will not find me substituting sweet potatoes into a chocolate cake to up the fiber, or adding wheat germ, or any other "tricks" my health magazines try to see me on. But with zucchini bread, I've felt the need to doctor recipes so that this can be a somewhat healthy snack, especially if I'm going to make 4-6 loaves at a time, which I'm prone to do.

Zucchini is pretty easy to come by during the summer, when it's in season. If you grow it in your garden, you will inevitably have more than you know what to do with. If you have a small garden and don't have space for it, such as I do, then you will probably have a friend or coworker that's looking to get rid of some of theirs.

This recipe is adapted from James Beard's Beard on Bread, which has a lot of delicious, basic bread recipes that you should learn how to make.

Zucchini Bread

3 eggs (egg substitute works well if you're a cholesterol-watcher like me)
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
2 cups grated, peeled zucchini
3 tsp. vanilla (I forgot to put it in today, which resulted in a more savory bread)
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
3 tsp cinnamon
1 cup walnuts

Beat the eggs. Add the sugar, oil, applesauce, zucchini, and vanilla and mix. Combine flour, salt, soda, baking powder and cinnamon; add to zucchini mixture. Stir until blended, add nuts, pour into two 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pans. Bake in 350 degree oven for one hour; cool on rack. I spray the pans with nonstick cooking spray and put a rectangle of waxed paper into the bottom, as I've found these loaves prone to sticking. You can also make 2 dozen muffins in lieu of two loaves, or one dozen muffins and one loaf.

This bread freezes exceptionally well. The recipe makes two loaves, so if you double or triple it, you will have a nice supply. I have played with the ratio of oil to applesauce and the flours. Using all whole wheat flour made the loaves heavy and a little dry. My next experiment may be to use equal parts whole wheat and whole wheat pastry flour. I also considered adding a bit of ginger in place of some of the cinnamon, but shied away for today. Next time.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

A Jungle of Mint

Summer is the time of year I love desserts the most. Well, that might only be partially true, as I love a dense, warm molten chocolate cake or gingerbread in the winter. But summer seems to bring endless flavor combinations with its ripe fruit.

Since getting an ice cream maker as a wedding present, I've been very busy whipping up various frozen desserts. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite, so I'll just list what I've been making: fresh mint ice cream, watermelon sorbet, blackberry-strawberry sorbet, and blackberry-nectarine sorbet. Making this list, I've just realized that I've neglected to try a peach ice cream, so I'll need to remedy that soon.

My mint plant is out of control, as mint tends to get. Mint grows runner roots, which means the roots go out horizontally underground, sprouting up other shoots along the way. Another complication with mint is that once you cut it back, it grows several new shoots in the place you just cut. Our first solution to controlling it was having a mojito party, but alas, that just made it grow back twice as big. Luckily, I have it in a container, so it's not taking over the entire garden. But it produces far more mint than I can typically use.



Enter solution #2: fresh mint ice cream. All I can say about this is that it's a true revelation. I will admit that I love mint-chip ice cream, despite its disturbing artificial minty green color. For fresh mint ice cream, you steep mint in milk and cream, strain it, and make a custard. It does have a faint green color, but the taste is completely refreshing and lovely. I used this recipe.

But I can't eat mint all the time, so I've turned to sorbet for an easy, healthy dessert. Sorbet is ridiculously easy and basically has a formula: 2-6 cups of fruit, 1/4-1 cup of sugar, a tablespoon or two of lemon or lime juice, and sometimes water, depending on the fruit. For example, for watermelon sorbet, I mix 4 cups of watermelon, 1/4 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. Watermelon doesn't need added water, and it's already pretty sweet, so not much sugar either. For blackberry-strawberry sorbet, I use 2 cups of strawberries, four cups of blackberries, a simple syrup of 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar, and one tablespoon of lime or lemon juice. Some of the combinations are a matter of experimentation; blend the fruit in a blender or food processor with some sugar (and water, if necessary) and keep tasting until you like the sweetness. I enjoy some tartness in sorbet. And if you don't have an ice cream maker, you can reduce the amount of water, pour the mixture (strain out seeds if there are berries) into a rectangular dish and freeze, scraping a fork across the mixture every 1-2 hours until it's frozen. Then you have granita, which is like a sno-cone, only without the nasty flavored syrup. Maybe you like the flavored syrup, but I prefer fresh watermelon flavor over, say, tiger's blood.

As for today, I think I'm going to put it all together and try a strawberry-mint ice cream.