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