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Budget cooking: experimenting with zucchini

After scraping the outsides off of a zucchini, I was left with a soggy core and some strange ideas that I decided to try out tonight. If you think they're good, you've got another thing coming, but we're here to try new things, right? 

So I sliced the zucchini up into some weirdly-shaped chips, then I chopped some of those into some other weirdly-shaped bits.

After I got tired of chopping zucchini, I tried muddling the bits, but that didn't do a whole lot. I dumped in a little soy sauce, too, because I was feeling fancy, and a touch of kosher salt with a few cracks of black pepper.

So then I got bored and dumped some bread crumbs in and kind of smashed it all into a patty-type dealio.

After a few minute frying in hot vegetable oil, I was left with a soggy mess that looked vaguely like a sick dog's shit on my plate. Luckily, I have no problems eating things that look like shit but aren't, so I let it cool and wolfed it down. The flavor was good, but it was just like eating super soggy bread with little bits of zucchini. Also, I burned my thumb. Fuck this recipe; don't try it.

So I made some more weirdly-shaped bits of zucchini, dumped in some flour, then realized this was an even worse idea, so I dumped in an egg white, realized that was an even worse idea, dumped in some salt and pepper, realized that didn't help, then dumped in some flour and mixed it all up with a fork.

That seemed halfway decent, so I spooned out half of it and put that in my oil. It all stuck together much better, and, if you're in the mood for some slightly-bready egg with zucchini bits, this one is for you. Unfortunately, I still had another scoop of mush left.

Being me, I tossed in a little soy sauce again, then some bread crumbs because fuck being sensible. I tossed the latest abomination into the oil.

It didn't quite hold together as well as the second attempt, but still much better than the first. Egg helps. That flavor, though, was spot on. The soy sauce is definitely a great choice for zucchini (or for fucking anything because soy sauce is great). The egg helped, but I'm still missing some element, so here's what I'm thinking:

  1. I need to try making a zucchini paste instead of just mincing it up. Then I can use the egg and maybe something like oatmeal or onion to help it all stick together.
  2. I could try using some miso paste instead of soy sauce. This would help keep it a little thicker than just adding liquid to something I want to have be more solid; alternatively, I could just add the soy sauce after the cooking is done as if I'm not a fucking moron.
  3. I'm also going to just bread and fry some zucchini again because that's lovely.
So not the worst experiment (that honor still belongs to chitlins #1), but definitely needs some more work done. Stay tuned; I've got another zucchini and a half to get through.

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