Thursday, March 5, 2015

425/1038 - Slow-cooked zucchini

This is the lovely looking little entrée I served to my dinner guests on Sunday evening.

Having decided that I would like to road test the recipe for slow-cooked zucchini, I simply added a few more layers and my dish was born. On the bottom was a home-made tomato sauce, slow cooked for several hours and flavoured with bay leaf and rosemary. The filling was the absolutely incredible zucchini which also spent a couple of hours on the stove top. It was the coriander seeds that made it fabulous! The zucchini leftovers ended up in a fabulous and very homely beef mince stir fry the following night.

On top was a small handful of Barossa Gypsy ham, which has the most wonderful onion and garlic coating. To finish things off I made mini garlic chips, which not only looked pretty but imparted a good crunch and great flavour to the dish.

These lovely layers were held together by circles of potato, which had been pan fried in coconut oil and then baked. I almost had a mini disaster on the day after I fried the potato and put it in the oven to be baked a bit closer to plating time. Completely forgetting they were there, I absent-mindedly pre-heated the oven in readiness for the bread, and after a few minutes wondered why I could smell potato cooking. I took them out without any damage done, but it did mean that the dish needed to be served cold as I was not keen to cook them a third time.

Last but not least, some lemon zest was grated over the top of my little stack, an addition I love to include in so many dishes, both sweet and savoury.

I was pleased with this entrée, but it was nowhere near my best work. Remembering to add the smoked salt and heating the potato just before plating might have elevated my rating of this dish. No matter, the guests were happy and on this night it ticked all of the required dietary boxes for my guests. 

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