Soiled Baked Zucchini Fries

Soiled Baked Zucchini Fries

Zucchini brings to mind four memories:

  1. My mom used to make chocolate cake with them. I have no idea how, or why, I just remember it was bad ass.
  2. My grandmother would make loaves of zucchini bread, it too was badass. So moist, so tasty, so not like a vegetable, so not healthy.
  3. Eating it at restaurants where it would be sliced, covered in a super thick batter and fried in rancid grease so long that it would render the one time healthy vitamin rich vegetable a giant hunk of tongue burning breadcrumbed lard. Served with crap tomato sauce or ranch dressing for your dipping pleasure of course.
  4. One summer my family was given a shit ton of zucchini from someone’s garden. My parents stored them in the basement, and we never even came close to using them all before they started to rot. I was given the job of throwing them out. When I went to pick up the bag it gave out from the bottom and a rotten zucchini burst its innards all over the floor. I’ve never smelled a bloated, rotting human corpse, but I have a feeling that it has to smell like rotten zucchini guts.

Fast forward to adulthood…

I’m not real keen on deep-fried foods (other than the occasional chicken wing), it’s been years since I had zucchini bread, I’ve never tasted that chocolate cake again, and I SOMEHOW managed to get over the smell of zucchini corpse caked to the basement floor. These days I embrace zucchini in various forms, usually in vegetable-tastic pasta or brown rice stir-fries.

I bought a couple zucchini the other day to add to a chicken, pasta stir-fry but only ended up using one. Not wanting to be faced with the scent of the zucchini corpse again, I knew I needed to use the leftover zuke ASAP. So, after my walk/lumber/sprint intervals on the treadmill today (which were nearly the same as yesterday), I thought I might sauté it to have along with my veggie burger. Mmmm…. vegetable soy protein in patty form and spray painted brown. Joking of course, I’ve always had a thing for veggie burgers. They’re so not beef, but I’m trying to cut back here and there these days as I try to fit back into my skinny jeans that aren’t really skinny jeans, but fit like skinny jeans because I got this fat from not eating f*cking veggie burgers, drinking too much beer, and not riding my bike enough!! I digress…

Then I changed my mind and thought about roasting it. But then I changed my mind yet gain and had the idea to slice them into french fry form and bake them. A quick Shmoogle™ search produced a recipe for crunchy, oven baked zucchini fries found on gimmedelicious.com. It looked great, but I wanted to cut out even more of the fat and calories (it was only for lunch side dish), so I left out the parmesan cheese that it called for, skipped the drizzled olive oil, and used Egg Beaters instead the whole egg.

The fries turned out PERFECT and I can’t wait to make them again!

Ingredients (as per my lunch time serving)

  • 1 small/medium zucchini
  • 1/2 cup-ish of Italian bread crumbs
  • Chipotle seasoning (or spice you dig) and black pepper (I use a LOT of black pepper).
  • Kosher salt to taste
  • 1/2 cup (as needed) of Egg Beaters

Directions

  • Preheat oven to 425˚.
  • Add bread crumbs and spices to a bowl or baking dish.
  • Pour Egg Beaters into a separate container and add sliced fry-sized zucchini to it, covering well.
  • Remove zucchini from egg and add to bread crumb mix, cover and shake thoroughly (or mix by hand to cover all the fries).
  • Spray Pam (or oil of choice) on a baking sheet.
  • Lay fries out with some space between them.
  • Bake for 25 to 30 minutes (or until crispy), turning once half way through.
  • Remove from oven and sprinkle with kosher salt.
  • Serve ’em up! I had mine as a side to my veggie burger, topped with some ketchup.

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For more musings about food that may or may not be good for you, and for some reason are written about on a cycling blog, hover about the Cat 5 Cooking menu button above and pick your choice of ill-written gastronomical time-wasting. Or click on the button to read the myriad of blog posts I’ve written in which I’ve blathered on about food instead of actually riding my bike.

Note: This is a lower fat, lower calorie version of the crunchy, oven baked zucchini fries recipe found on gimmedelicious.com. I thank them for the inspiration.

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