Attack of the Zucchini

I thought my zucchini plants had finally stopped producing, but boy was I wrong.  I harvested four or five good sized ones right before I went to New York to visit my mom and when I came back a week later I found these giant mutant zucchini.

I included the soda can to provide some perspective on how big these guys are.

Seriously?  So, back to Martha's on-line zucchini file.  This time I went the savory route, choosing Zucchini Quesadillas http://www.marthastewart.com/313833/zucchini-quesadillas.  To make it a full meal I also made Martha's corn soup http://www.marthastewart.com/904230/corn-soup from the July issue.  The quesadillas were delicious, the soup ... not so much.  Let's start with delicious.

The quesadilla filling is essentially sauteed onion, zucchini, and corn (Martha suggested frozen, but I used fresh).  There were no spices other than fresh cilantro, but the filling was really good.

The filling goes into the tortilla with pepper jack cheese and is baked until golden brown.  Martha suggested brushing the tortillas with oil, but being quite an experienced quesadilla maker (one of the few items my kids will eat) I thought that was unnecessary and just added unneeded calories.



Here are my finished quesadillas. 

I really liked them and will definitely make them again.  I guess I have to with all those zucchini to finish.

The corn soup was not as successful and was a bit of a pain to make.  First I had to make a corn stock using six corncobs--yes, that is a lot of shucking and kernel removing.  The rest of the soup was chopped onion, garlic, corn and half and half.  Sound kind of bland?  Yeah, it was.  Really, this soup was virtually tasteless. 

I did come up with a solution to liven it up though, I added some of the leftover quesadilla filling to each bowl.  It ended up being a pretty tasty soup and looked pretty too, though I won't be making this again.  I'd have to always make both recipes and I just don't think that would be worth it when there are plenty of tasty corn soups out there.

 So, to sum things up, zucchini quesadillas - yeah, corn soup - nay.

-Jacqui

Plum Perfect?

Sorry for the terribly long hiatus.  It's summer.  I have no other excuse.

This month, Martha featured a very summery plum puff pastry tart and I thought it would be a perfect way to get back into the swing of things.  Or so I thought.

Martha requires 10 plums for this recipe. I know, right!?  It seemed like an awful lot to me too. While I'm not sure exactly how much 10 plums weigh, I do know they're not light.  Martha paired the recipe with puffed pasty - about as light and airy as pastry gets.  And here, my friends, is where the problem lies.  The puff pastry simply can't support the weight of the plums.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Martha has you toast almonds, grind them in a food processor and sprinkle them, mixed with sugar, on the pastry.  But you can't taste them.  And by that, I mean you can't taste them at all.  As you know, I don't like doing unnecessary work.

And then there were the 10 plums.  Ben ate plum slices.  Benjamin ate plum slices (ok, spitting them out doesn't really qualify as eating them...).  And I ate plum slices.

I still couldn't squeeze all the remaining slices the 10 plums generated on the puff pastry.  So we ate some more plum slices.

AND then there was the jam.  There was no way I could have used Martha's recommended cup of apricot jam, I tried to use 3/4 of cup, but I thought it ended up soupy instead of nicely glazing the plums.  1/2 cup of jam would have been ample.

The tart came of the oven a jammy, juicy soup.

Slicing it proved to be a challenge.

The tart would have been better had the plum slices been laid on their sides and maybe using only 5 plums.

Between the food processor, the need to put the tart in the freezer at various stages, and the exaggerated amounts of ingredients necessary, the recipe gets a big fail from me.  However, it did receive glowing reviews from those with whom I shared it.  The lesson here is eat it if it's given to you, just don't make it yourself.

Here's a link to Martha's recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/904198/striped-plum-tart

Ali