Whore's Pasta and Zucchini Loaf

Well I'm back.  Because our little home got so freaking hot in the summer, we ate out ALOT so as to avoid turning on the stove.  Tensions ran high as the temperature rose in our apartment (admittedly because I can't cope with the heat as well as P), so we never turned down an invitation to eat at someone's house or to eat out at a restaurant.  We also ran almost every evening to take advantage of the beautiful weather leaving little time for cooking.  I'm hoping to be a bit more consistent with cooking and blogging now that the weather is cooling down.  Looking forward to comfort fall foods.  But I hope and pray that we will stay consistent with our running because I love to pack fall comfort foods into my gob and thus onto my hips.

The first meal I chose to celebrate the cooling weather includes Pasta Puttanesca and Chocolate Zucchini Loaf.

Two weeks ago I bought four zucchini for $2 at Mary's Garden in Surrey.  I already knew that four zucchini for the two of us is a terrible idea because we can only eat so much zucchini and they would just sit in our fridge where they will meet an undignified death of going rotten.  One zucchini was made into a side dish, one was put in a casserole which left two zucchini.  Surprisingly, they were still good after two weeks.  Sick of zucchini side dishes, I decided to try a zucchini loaf.  As a former veggie hater, I couldn't imagine veggies going into a dessert, but decided to press on.

Chocolate Zucchini Loaf

(Adapted from King Arthur Flour's Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread recipe)

2 large eggs

1/3 cup honey

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup brown sugar ( I reduced the sugar to 1/3 cup and it still came out with good results.  Just depends on your taste)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup Dutch-process cocoa (I used Fry's cocoa.  I have no clue if it's Dutch-process)

1 2/3 cups Flour

2 cups shredded, unpeeled zucchini, gently pressed

1 cup chocolate chips

In one bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips.

 

In another bowl mix together the eggs, honey, oil, brown sugar, and vanilla.  Mix until smooth. 

Pour the dry mixture and zucchini into the wet mixture and combine/fold with a spatula until well combined. 

Pour into a 8 1/2" by 4 1/2" inch loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for approximately 50 to 60 minutes (or longer depending on your oven).  Test for doneness with a toothpick.  Toothpick should come out clean with perhaps a melted chocolate chip streak.

Let cool in pan for 10 to 15 minutes then let cool further on rack.  Let cool completely before slicing (I didn't wait because I'm a greedy Gus).  Store at room temperature well wrapped once cooled.

Two tips:

1. The original recipe said to add the chocolate chips after stirring in the dry ingredients.  I read somewhere that if you coat the chocolate chips in flour, it'll prevent them from sinking.  So therefore, I mixed the chocolate chips with the dry ingredients to coat them in flour without adding additional flour.

2.  Measuring honey and pouring it out of the measuring cup is a bitch!  To get  honey to slide out easy, I measure the oil or melted butter the recipe calls for first in a liquids measuring cup then use the same measuring cup to measure out the honey.  Honey slides out easy.  You could also achieve the same results by spraying non-stick cooking spray lightly into a measuring cup if the recipe doesn't call for any oil/melted butter.

I'm all motivated and start measuring out my dry ingredients and grating my zucchini.  Then it comes time to measure the cocoa.  But for the life of me I could not find my cocoa.  I looked in all cupboards, emptying each one, finding ingredients I totally forgot I had (i.e. smoked paprika from Spain that I've yet to use).  At one point I was standing on my counter trying to look deep into the black hole that is my cupboard.  However, no cocoa.  Start to feel my blood boil because I could've sworn I had cocoa and had just used it a few months ago when I made chocolate cookies for ice cream sandwiches (which, on a side note, I took to girls night and after a few glasses of wine and talk about our love lives, we just ate the cookies without the ice cream). 

After a few salty curse words, I debated calling P at work (sure he would appreciate that) and asking him in an accusatory tone where the hell was my cocoa, but decide against it.  Instead, I put the ingredients away for later (was going out to an appointment anyhow and would pick up cocoa then) and settle into the couch to watch The Facts of Life on Netflix.  I admired Blair's beauty and daydreamed myself with her big gorgeous 80's hair when in reality throughout my childhood and teens I was a nerdy Natalie.  Sigh!

The zucchini definitely makes the loaf moist and it doesn't come off veggie-ish.  You barely know it's existence because you're so distracted by the yummy chocolate chips.  It's actually quite delicious. P says it's a little bit on the sweet side and I should instead put more chocolate chips instead of sugar.  Write your damn food blog then!

Onto the next recipe!

I love Pasta Puttanesca.  I love saying Pasta Puttanesca.  Puttanesca...whore's pasta.  Whore!

This is one of my favorite dishes.  One of my friend's, Vinnie (obviously not her real name), is half Italian.  When we were in our early twenties, a bunch of us would get invited to her house for dinner for her birthday or New Year's.  Her parents are amazing cooks, would go all out on the meal (my first taste of raw oyster was at her house), and would serve course after course of delicious food.  I would not eat breakfast or dinner in preparation for the meal.  Pasta Puttanesca got served as one of the courses a few times and I fell in love with the simplicity of this dish.  Essentially it's a tomato sauce that has anchovies, hot pepper flakes, olives, and capers (though I don't think Vinnie's Dad added capers...can't seem to remember).  I remember one of my earliest attempts at this dish was taking jarred tomato sauce and canned olives and mixing it together and putting it on spaghetti.  Not even close.  I could've looked it up on the internet since we did have internet at this point, but I was too busy chatting on ICQ with a boy I liked and looking up pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio to even think of looking up the recipe. 

On a side note, one of the New Year's I was invited to was during the Y2K scare.  For you young ones that don't know what the Y2K scare was, it was when everyone thought the world was going to crap because computers would crash due to not being able to process a new century.  One of the boys I liked was going to be there, but because my Mom was frightened of the Y2K scare, she wanted us to be home before midnight so we could be together in case Skynet took over and our world got all Terminator-y.  1130 rolls around and I'm getting all scheme-y about how I can swing staying til midnight so I can kiss the boy I liked at midnight.  But, my Mom started calling at 1150  angry that I wasn't home so I had to leave.  Made it home for midnight to ring in the year 2000 with my family.  Surprise!  The world didn't end!  Missed opportunity...Devastating!

Anyhow, now I know better so decided to use up the tomatoes I picked up the same time I picked up the zucchini.

The recipe I used is Nadia G's (love her!) Spaghetti all Puttanesca.  Too tired to type out the recipe so click here for it.

Some pics:

Recipe calls for cherry tomatoes rather than canned tomatoes

Capers and Olives

Anchovy paste...strong stuff.  Try brushing your teeth with it!

Yummy sauce

Et Voila!

 I liked this variation on the Pasta Puttanesca that I know.  I love olives and capers to begin with because of their saltiness (I'm a salty and sweet gal).  The anchovies adds another savoury salty dimension.  P says he likes it and would eat it again.  This is huge considering he thinks lobster is "alright" and the blueberry butter tarts I made that proved to be quite popular were "not bad".

All in all, a busy productive day.  We go for a run after dinner, but I come home and sneak in a piece of zucchini loaf.  Heaven help my hips this fall!