Cooking for one - well, first I should explain that I am in Ohio at our lake house enjoying late-summer produce and early-school grandchild activities like soccer and cross-county and football - if a grand plays it, I watch it. Vaden is in VA at our house with Bruce & Kathy who are living there while their fabulous reno is going on. So - back to cooking for one...it's boring...and eating alone - worse. I wanted something small and uncomplicated and settled on this zucchini recipe since I picked up 3 zucchinis for a dollar at Hurley Farms - wonderful produce market here at the lake.
I assembled all the ingredients and got out the food processor. I don't normally use this manic device without Vaden in attendance. But - courageously I proceeded as the recipe directed: pulsing toasty almonds, Parmesan, garlic, red pepper and then adding the salt, lemon juice & evoo. Ummm - tasting - ummm more lemon juice - tasting - more salt...still too bland - bigger pinch of red pepper flakes - better. This was a little too thick to actually swirl in the bowl - meant to take a picture here but I forgot. OK - the dressing is in the bowl.
Now for the zucchini; making the ribbons is actually easy (I admit to having done it before) and I recommend going once all around the zucchini to shave off most of the skin. I used 3 medium zucs and produced enough ribbons with a lot of poor zuc remains.
With my hands (as Deb suggests) I tossed the dressing and the ribbons. Tasting - ummm - needs something more, added Parmesan flakes and a grinding of black pepper - better. But I'm here to tell you, dear friends, that I doubt I'll make this again. Just not enough there there for me.
PS - If you want to know what it's like at the lake...here's Vaden and me out for a row.
Funny - I bought the ingredients for this one at the store today. Seemed pretty fresh and summery. I'll post my review here in the comments once I make it.
ReplyDeleteToo bad it wasn't great. It looked pretty!
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of your mise-en-place!
ReplyDeleteHey. I swear I posted my comments last week, but here I go again.
ReplyDeleteSo I made this a week ago, and my tasters and I quite enjoyed it. I thought of it as a twist on cold sesame noodles. I probably used less zucchini than the recipe suggests, so there was a lot of sauce and thus really nice flavor. I will make this again!