What do excess zucchini and a bored, unwell 4 year old have in common?  Elise’s Chocolate Zucchini Cake over at Simply Recipes!  This made for a fun Sunday afternoon project, and we’ve been happily nibbling the delicious results all week. It has a wonderful chocolate flavor, and stays moist and not too dense. Lisl was worried that the zucchini might give it a vegetable-y flavor, but one taste and she was sold.

At first I was scouring Elise’s post and comments in puzzlement that the grated zucchini was not squeezed to remove the water, but indeed it is not necessary — the recipe already accounts for the moisture. Note that in the below ingredients, posted for my own future reference, I halved the amount of orange zest used.

I heartily recommend that you pop over to Simply Recipes to read the post and directions.

Chocolate & Zucchini Cake
2 1/2 cups regular all-purpose flour, unsifted
1/2 cup cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soft butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

I’ve been reading Julia Child’s My Life in France and the difficulties she faced trying to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  In 1959, when Houghton Mifflin finally passed on the book, and before Knopf picked it up, Julia read a note from her champion at Houghton who explained the rejection, “They feel [the average housewife] wants ’shortcuts to something equivalent’ instead of the perfect process to the absolute.”

America’s culture has changed a lot since then, but anyone who reads Simone de Beauvoir’s 1947 America Day by Day will be struck by how much has remained consistent.  The business instincts of the Houghton execs remains somewhat true today if Rachel Ray’s empire is any evidence.  Thankfully, there is room for more ambitious efforts, as Julia Child and Simone Beck proved and as new author/chefs continue to show; a recent example is Paul Bertolli’s almost literary Cooking by Hand.

Ratatouille strikes me as a perfect dish to highlight the merits of the two mindsets (and there are indeed merits to both).  Sometimes I will throw together a ratatouille very quickly, let all the components stew together for a while unaided, and enjoy a perfectly good rendition.  However, with a little more effort and time, you can take the dish to a different level entirely.

On Friday evening, after picking up some lovely fresh vegetables from the local farm, I rolled up my sleeves and put together an adaptation of Lulu Peyraud’s ratatouille from Richard Olney’s cookbook Lulu’s Provencal Table. It is considerably more involved than my usual, but the result, which we ate the next evening, was the sweetest, most delicious ratatouille I have had in a long while.

Ratatouille, adapted from Richard Olney and Lulu Peyraud’s recipe

1 lb vidalia onion, halved then thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, lightly crushed, peeled and minced
1 lb zucchini, preferably small to medium sized, quartered and cut into 3/4 inch pieces
1 lb young eggplant, preferably Asian/Japanese (unless you are French), halved if large, and cut into 3/4 inch rounds
1 lb plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and cut into eighths
3 large sweet peppers (a mix of colors is nice; I used 2 red, 1 green), treatment below
Bouquet garni of 2 small sprigs each of oregano and winter savory, and 2 bay leaves, tied with kitchen string
salt
olive oil

In a large pot, warm up 3 tbsp of olive oil on very low heat and slowly cook the onions for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 1 tsp of salt (I like cooking with kosher salt), the minced garlic, and the sliced zucchini. Continue to cook on the low heat, stirring occasionally.

While your onions cook, peel and de-seed the tomatoes. To peel the tomatoes, score an X in the skin on the bottom of the tomato, and place in boiling water for 30 seconds.  Let cool, and the skin should slip off quite easily.  Slice in half (if the tomato was the earth, and the stem is the north pole, cut at the equator) and use a finger to remove most of the seeds.  Chop each tomato into 8 chunks and reserve.

Char your sweet peppers under the boiler, on the grill, or directly on a gas flame (Lulu’s method is to char over wood embers, but not everyone has that luxury).  Place the peppers in a paper bag and let cool for several minutes.  Peel of the charred skins, and de-seed, being careful to preserve the juices from the inside of the peppers.  Reserve those juices (sans seeds), and slice the peppers lengthwise into narrow strips; reserve.

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat up 2 tbsp of olive oil on medium heat. Saute the eggplant rounds (or pieces) on one side for a couple of minutes, sprinkling half a teaspoon of salt on top, then add another 1 or 2 tbsp of olive oil and flip the eggplant and cook the other side for several minutes until they are softened.  I add the oil in two steps so that one side of the eggplant doesn’t absorb it all. Add the eggplant to the stew pot with the onions, leaving remaining oil in the skillet.

If the skillet is fairly dry, add another tbsp of olive oil, get the pan fairly hot with high heat, and then add the tomatoes and half a teaspoon of salt. Saute, shaking the pan and stirring the tomatoes until much of the liquid has evaporated, but before the tomatoes disintegrate.  Empty the skillet into the stew pot.

Add the peppers and the reserved juices, and immerse the bouquet garnis.

Cook at a low simmer, uncovered, for 2 hours stirring occasionally and lowering the heat as the liquid reduces. Cook until all the excess liquid has evaporated and the vegetables are covered in a syrupy sauce.

Remove from the heat, taste for salt and stir in a little pepper. Let cool, and then refridgerate overnight.  Let the ratatouille come to room temperature the next day before serving.

Additional Lulu ideas: stir in some pitted black olives, some diced celery, and/or some more olive oil right before serving.

Following on from Elizabeth David, Richard Olney was assigned the entrée (in the French meaning of the term). Flipping through his cookbook Simple French Food for inspiration, I came across this description: “one of these little puddings, prelude to an amicable chunk of rare meat, might take many a jaded gastronome by surprise.” Well, zucchini are abundant at Gill’s farmstand, and our menu certainly included an “amicable chunk of meat,” so Dick’s zucchini pudding soufflés sounded just the ticket.

Well, delicious it certainly was, but as a soufflé, it was something of a flop (pardon the pun), hence the renaming of the recipe. As an aside, if you’re ever tempted to cook from Richard Olney, bear in mind that “simple” is a complete oxymoron for this publication. Any recipe that reads in part “prepare the béchamel as usual” with no further guidance is not for the novice. These recipes also require a fair bit of stamina and concentration.

Zucchini Puddings

Zucchini:
1 lb of zucchini
Salt
2 tbs butter

Béchamel
2 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
¾ cup milk

3 eggs, separated
Salt/pepper

Sauce
2/3 cup tomato puree (home made – see below)
1 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

The first step is to prepare the zucchini: grate about one pound of peeled zucchini (Olney recommends hand-grating or using a Mouli-julienne, but he was writing in 1974; two cycles of the Cuisinart saved me about 2 hours). Arrange the grated zucchini in layers in a bowl, sprinkling each layer with salt, and let stand for 30 minutes. Then work the zucchini with your hands to get the liquid out of it: squeeze it repeatedly “until it is swimming” in juice, strain it a couple of times through a sieve, and press well “to rid it of flagrant moisture.” This is a fairly labor-intensive step and takes a while to get the zucchini properly dried out. Next, sauté the zucchini over a medium flame in a generous amount of butter (well, it is French cooking) until well dried out and starting to color, about 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Next, the béchamel. In a saucepan over a medium flame, melt the butter, add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon for a minute or two to make the roux. Turn down the heat and add the milk to the roux a little at a time until well combined (this works best if the milk is warmed up for about a minute in the microwave first. Continue to stir until thick and creamy – this will happen fast with only 3/4 cup of milk. You can also use a whisk to keep the sauce free of lumps. Remove the saucepan from heat as soon as the béchamel has thickened and let it cool slightly. Then, mix in the 3 egg yolks one at a time. Season with salt and pepper. Then stir in the cooked zucchini.

In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add about a third into the béchamel/egg/zucchini mixture to loosen it up, then gently fold in the rest of the beaten egg whites. Take care with this step – do not let yourself become too distracted by interesting political conversations or attention-seeking 3-year-olds and over-mix the egg whites, or the puddings will not rise and you will have to change the name of the dish from souffle to pudding. Don’t worry if you do – they will still taste good.

Pour the mixture into well-buttered ramekins (or a single larger souffle dish). Place the ramekins in a large shallow baking dish. Pull out the oven rack half-way, put the dish on the rack and then pour in enough boiling water to immerse the ramekins to two-thirds of the way up the sides (a bain-marie). Cook at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until the surface of the puddings is firm and springy to the touch. Take ramekins out of the bain-marie and allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Turn the oven up to 450F.

While the puddings are cooling, make the tomato sauce: whisk together the tomato puree and cream, season with salt, pepper, cayenne. You can used canned puree, or make your own as we did by cooking up 2 tins of skinless plum tomatoes, a handful of basil and several sprigs of oregano, a few pinches of salt and sugar. Bring this to a boil, then simmer for an hour. Run this through the food mill, then cook it down further for another hour or two until it has a nice thick consistency (this yields much more than you need for this recipe, but tomato puree is quite useful to have around, so we made extra).

Turn the puddings out of the ramekins and return them to a baking dish large enough to hold all of them comfortably. Pour over enough tomato sauce to coat the puddings well, allowing the sauce to run down around them in the dish. Top with grated parmesan cheese and return to the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the surface is browning and the sauce bubbling. Plate and serve, spooning some of the tomato sauce around the puddings.

We served this with a viognier wine with decent acidity. The puddings (aka souffles) might not have puffed up to full glory, but they disappeared quickly from the plates.

[Update 8/30/09 a year later, I made this dish again and loved it as much, if not more.  I am updating the recipe to be less of a record of the original creation and more of a general recipe).

I seem to be on this vegetarian comfort food kick. Tonight’s dinner was a lovely success, layering eggplant, zucchini, cheese, breadcrumbs and basil. I completely winged it (having only about 2 brain cells left to rub together after a late night and a long day) but at the first bite Lisl and I were both at “wow!” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised… melted veggies with gobs of cheese and olive oil? As Mr. Powers would say, yeah baby!

3 golden zucchini (green or summer squash fine as well)
2 medium Japanese eggplants, peeled (Italian eggplant fine as well)
1 cup coarse bread crumbs (whole wheat or rustic white)
large handful of basil leaves
1/2 cup coarsely grated mozzarella cheese (version 2: manchego)
1/2 cup coarsely grated monterey jack cheese (version 2: cheddar)
1/2 cup coarsely grated parmesan cheese
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

In a food processor, pulse your bread into coarse breadcrumbs. Preheat oven at 350F.  In a baking tray, spread out the crumbs and bake, occasionally stirring around, until lightly browned.

Peel the eggplant with a vegetable peeler and slice lengthwise into slices about 2 millimeters thick.  (Optional: salt both sides of the eggplant and place in a colander to drain for about 20 minutes. Dry the slices with paper towel. Then slice the zucchini the same thickness.

Heat a large pan with olive oil on medium to medium-high heat and saute your eggplant and zucchini for 30-40 seconds a side, adding more olive oil to the pan between each batch. You don’t need to cook the slices all the way, just enough to soften them.

In a deep, medium-sized baking dish baking dish, layer your gratin by alternating the ingredients as you wish, or in this order:

eggplant
a mixture of the 3 cheeses
zucchini
salt and pepper
scattering of breadcrumbs
layer of basil leaves
cheese
eggplant
zucchini
salt and pepper
cheese
basil
eggplant
zucchini
salt and pepper
final, more thorough layer of cheese
final, more thorough layer of breadcrumbs

Don’t be afraid to cut your slices of eggplant or zucchini into the necessary size to fit the gaps in a layer. Where it calls for salt and pepper, just add 2 or 3 turnings of a grinder.  The order of the layers and ingredients is anything but scientific — the flavors will blend together nicely.

Out of focus picture but you get the point…

Optional: drizzle some olive oil over top.

Baked for 50 minutes at 350F. You get a delightful crust and a totally melted core. The layer of basil really permeates this dish nicely. It’s rich, but oh so satisfying. This dish can handle a hefty, peppery red wine should you be so inclined.

I’ll end with a few “ingredients” pictures.

I love how this one came out.