Zucchini Feast

I haven’t done a Feast story in awhile, and a friend recently gave me a large home-grown zucchini. So, a perfect combination and timing for a story.

For a long time, I wanted to try a zucchini dish I saw in one of the reels online that seemed easy and tasty. The recipe called for a zucchini to be cut along into thin long strips, boiled for a couple of minutes to soften it, and stuffed and rolled with a soft cheese and walnuts mixture.

Unfortunately, my zucchini was too hard and I didn’t have a good peeler to cut it into thin long strips. So I decided to do a layered dish instead. In the process of trying to cut it into strips, however, I shaved off about one third of the zucchini and when I cut it into circles I ended up with not the full circles but more like 3/4 phased moon circles, which worked out better as I could fit more of them in the baking dish.

I used a medium-sized round baking dish, sprayed with olive oil. I covered the first layer of zucchini circles with Colby Jack cheese.

Then I laid out the second layer of zucchini circles and covered it with the mixture of soft cheese and walnuts. I used a 4-Oz package of goat cheese but if you don’t like its strong flavor, any soft cheese like ricotta or cottage cheese will work. Half a cup of Walnuts needs to be cut or minced into small pieces. I also added about a teaspoon of sumac into the mixture and about 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt as the goat cheese was a little too dry and hard to mix. This is how the second layer looked.

I still had a lot of zucchini and soft cheese mixture left, so I did the third layer and sprinkled it with shredded Colby Jack on top.

Then I covered it with the lid and baked it at 360F for about 25 minutes. I ate it cooled but not too cold as zucchini, just like an eggplant, tastes better when it’s cooled off. It made an excellent side dish for steamed salmon but you can use any type of proteins with it, cooked to your taste and desire.

I’m not about the dish presentation, so this is how it looked on my plate when cooled off. Ugly, I know, but it was incredibly delicious.

What did I do with the botched slices, you’d ask? I run a no-waste kitchen, so I cubed and sautéed them with one large tomato, half of a medium-sized onion, Italian herbs and sesame seeds. As a result, I got an excellent bruschetta-like topping which I ate on a slice of a toasted Italian bread for brunch with the egg baked in tomato, pictured here:

I believe I already posted the recipe for the baked egg, but just in case again as it’s so easy: cut off the part of the tomato where it has the stem, clean it out of the inside soft part and seeds (you can use it for a salad or put it back into the backing dish with a little bit of shredded cheese as a base for the tomato to stand firmly). Put a layer of any shredded cheese into the tomato and break one egg into it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover the tomato with a slice of provolone cheese (it’s usually round and works well as a “lid” for the tomato). Cover with the baking dish lid or foil, send it into the 360F oven for 15-20 minutes and enjoy!