October 2009 Archives

This week I decided to tackle a vegetable that's always been an enemy of mine: the zucchini. And, unfortunately, I will admit that my chosen approach to it was a little bit of a cop-out. After browsing recipes for awhile, I didn't really find anything that appealed to me, so I decided to use some other veggies I had on hand to make zucchini-potato-corn pancakes. A little bit haphazard, a little bit weird, but they turned out decent. Here's a rough version of the recipe I devised:

• 1 medium zucchini
• 2 Idaho potatoes
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 Tblsp oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Grate the potatoes and zucchini. Heat up the corn. Combine all ingredients. Heat an oiled skillet to medium-high. Scoop the pancake batter onto the skillet by heaping tablespoonfuls. Flatten it out with a spatula. Cook on both sides until browned.

I put some apple slices on mine, since I didn't have any apple sauce. I have to say, these were not bad. I might not make them quite the same way if I made them again, but they were fairly tasty. The zucchini and the potato were both present, although the corn was a little distracting. They were a bit dense. If I made them again, I'd probably add an egg and some baking powder to fluff them up a little. They'd probably be a good side dish.

As for enhancing my appreciation for the zucchini, I don't know how much this accomplished. The zucchini wasn't quite the focus of the dish, and the pancakes might have just been a way for me to drown it out. I still have one zucchini left, so you might see a sequel to this in the coming few days.

I had mixed feelings about the resulting salad. The dressing was pretty good, and the salad as a whole was light and fresh, but the endive really didn't do much for me. It was very bitter, and the dressing wasn't strong enough to counteract or balance it out. The avocado was so mild in comparison that I barely noticed it. Bitterness is for sure my least favorite kind of flavor, which is probably part of the reason why I've never been crazy about vegetables. I probably will need to figure out some kind of reliable way to counteract it. Anyway, the endive has certainly not become my new favorite food. Guess I'll hope for better luck next week.

I was certainly never easy to feed as a child. To put it very mildly, I was a picky eater. I wouldn't (and still won't) eat eggs by themselves or most kinds of cheese, as well as a wide variety of other types of food. My horizons have broadened considerably on a lot of fronts, but one on which they haven't is that of the most dreaded food group of all: Vegetables.

It's a cliche almost, but for much of my life, I've found most vegetables virtually inedible. Only through a force of will have I forced myself to learn to enjoy a basic salad and green beans. But there's a wide world of veggies I either always steer clear of or just have never tried. This past year, my appreciation of food has grown and I've been trying to push myself to try new things. My internship with Epicurious this summer required me to look through a lot of recipes, articles, and technique videos, and I came to the realization that there are a multitude of flavors I've never experienced, flavors that are all essentially at my fingertips.

So I'm issuing myself a challenge: to try (or give a second chance to) one vegetable every week, until I crack or until I run out of different vegetables. I'm notoriously bad at following through on this kind of thing, but I think this one's pretty feasible. I'll put photos of how I prepared the vegetable and my thoughts on it up her afterwards.

Hopefully I'll discover there are a lot of things I've never tried that I actually like. At the very least, I'll be more informed and broaden my palette. Stay tuned.