Arlene’s FIRST Zucchini Special from 1992!

Episode AH2462: Well hello. I’m so glad you could be with us today on At Home. This is one of those days, everybody’s kind of having a rough time getting started. Have you had any days like that lately? You know, sometimes things just going so smooth, and then all of the sudden you just get one of those off days when you feel like here’s their world, and here you are over here, just kind of trying to get to the right spot, but we’re gonna make it. No matter what kind of a day it is, we’re gonna make it, right? Absolutely. And one of the major problems in the world today is an overabundance of zucchini. I mean I have letters from people… I mean, I have to read you some of these, because this is you unbelievable. This lady says, real nice lady, her name’s Joann, she’s from Latrobe and she says, “We have a lot of zucchini this year. “Like a lot of zucchini. “I was wondering if you had “any interesting recipes using zucchini? “I’m sure a lot of viewers are looking “for ways to use them. “The rain that we had this summer was great for the garden, “but the vines went wild.” Can you see these vines just going every which way, and zucchinis hanging on them everywhere. That’s just one letter. Then this lady says, “I love your show,” thank you very much, “How about making something with zucchini, “as I have a garden, “and I would like to have zucchini cookies, “or zucchini bread, or zucchini casserole, “something like that.” Well, that’s Mrs. Phillips, and we’re gonna try to accommodate you today. Another lady, Ruby, she says, “I would like to see some good zucchini recipes.” Well, we’re here to please, I want you to know, and today that’s what we’re gonna do. These wonderful little creatures that are so tasty, and in the wintertime are so expensive, if you remember, but in the summertime the abundance is incredible for them, and they’re so good. There’s so many ways to prepare them, and today we’re going to show you three different, distinctively different recipes, with the basis of zucchini. Well, get a cup of coffee, get your paper and pencil, and get ready because zucchinis here we come. We’ll start in just a minute, right after this word. Here’s today’s At Home Hint. Since most recipes calls for both salt and pepper, keep a large shaker filled with a mixture of both. 3/4 salt and 1/4 pepper is a good combination. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Well, to get started today, I want to tell you that we’re gonna make a zucchini lasagna. Now I know we’ve had lasagna, all different kinds of lasagna before, but this is different, little different. And the other thing we’re going to make is something called continental zucchini, which is a casserole that you do on top of the stove. And the third thing that we’re going to… Third thing, listen to me, the third dish that we’re going to prepare today, is zucchini bread. I think you’re gonna see that it’s very interesting, and three distinctively different tastes with the basis of zucchini. Now basically we’re gonna start now with the lasagna, and the first thing that we do is brown very well two pound of ground chuck, ground sirloin, any lean kind of beef, okay? And this is beautifully browned, and very little oil to that, but it’s still… Very little fat to it. It still is very good to break it up, and then we’re gonna drain it, because we don’t want any kind of additional fat in this recipe at all. So we’ve gone ahead and browned this and prepared it, so that we can move along with this recipe, okay? All right, and you just do that over a strainer, to make sure that you get it all completely drained, and let it drain out of there. Shake your strainer, get it… Now if we had the time, we would let this sit for just a few minutes, to be sure that it had drained every drop, okay? And see there’s not that much fat, but you still need to get that out, because we don’t need to have that in the dish. Number one, it makes it greasy, and number two, we just don’t need that. And what we’re gonna do with this, is get our casserole dish, and you know this is my wonderful lasagna dish that I get from the Wholey’s Balcony Cookware, that is so nice, and deep, and tall, and I’m not even sure that these are available anymore, but they’re such a handy dish, and she said every time, Caroline my friend there says, “Every time you talk about that on At Home, “people come in and buy them all up, “and then I can’t get them anymore, “because they’re gonna discontinue them,” but as long as we’ve got these dishes, you can use a regular casserole dish. This is important, because it has real high sides, and you can put a lot of ingredients in it without it cooking all over the oven. All right, we’re going to then place the ground beef into our baking dish, and you just layer it across the bottom. Just like that. Let’s spread it around. Break up those big chunks, you don’t want big chunks of meet in the bottom of this dish. Okay. Next what we’re going to do, is we’re gonna take our zucchinis, and we’re gonna cut the end off. You don’t have to peel zucchinis, okay? You do not have to peel, as long as they’re nice and clean, and they’ve been wiped down, you don’t have to peel them because that’s all good for you. It’s not gonna hurt you at all. And we’re not cutting them in circles, we’re gonna cut them longways today, in about 1/4 of an inch. Now that’s a little more than 1/4 of an inch thick, but we’re gonna trim that down. It’s not exactly… There we go, that’s a little better. And so if it’s a little bit more than 1/4 of an inch, we’re not gonna fail you in zucchini class here. We’re gonna try to cut these as close as we can to 1/4 of an inch. That’s a nice one there. Okay. And you say, “Well I never did it that way.” Well, you know there’s lots of good recipes out there. In fact one of our favorite restaurants in Pittsburgh, uses zucchini and they cut it, but they cut it real thin, and then they put a breading on it, and they deep fry it, and they make it like an appetizer. Next we’re layering that over top of the meat. See, you should do it that way so they all fit right. Of course this one will fit right in there. These will fit… I think we can fit that one right there. Like it was made for there. What do you think about that? Was that nice, Larry?

[Larry] Beautiful.

Look at that, just perfect, okay. We’ve layered the zucchini over top of the ground meat. Now what we’re going to do is sprinkle this with some cheese. What I have here is lowfat. This is about a cup of mozzarella cheese and it’s shredded. Now if you wanna buy the little chunks, and shred it yourself, that’s fine, but we’re gonna layer a cup over this. Okay. You like it so far? I think it’s gonna be good. I think you’re gonna like this, okay? And besides the cup of mozzarella, we will then put some provolone. Which we don’t, let me see, here we go. All right. And we’ll use a cup of it also. I tell you, these packages of cheese that are already done for you, makes the job so easy, it’s incredible. All right now, after we have that done, then, like I said, this is a quick and easy recipe. Then all you’re gonna do is take two cups, now this is more than two cups. You can use your own spaghetti sauce that you’ve made. You can use it jarred. This is… This is a quart, so you’re not gonna use all of this, but you just spread about two cups of spaghetti sauce over top of all of this. You want more, use more. You want less, use less. But you’re gonna cover it with that, okay? And again, we wanna just spread it around, so it’s kind of evenly distributed. What could be easier than that? And zucchini is so good for you, so good for you. Low in calories, has no fat in it, and it’s just so tasty. If you wanted to make regular zucchini, or regular lasagna like we do, you know with the layers of cheese and stuff, you can do that, and instead of using the noodles, put down layers of zucchini, and it tastes so good, and it’s so much better for you. Takes that heavy pasta flavor out. Okay. So we have done that. I think we are finished with everything. Now this is going to go into the oven at 350 degrees. We’re gonna bake this for 20 to 30 minutes, til it gets hot and bubbly. Remember also that zucchini does not take long to cook, so that’s another plus for this, for using it more often than we normally do. All right the next item we’re gonna cook, it’s called zucchini, continental zucchini, and it’s a dish that you could whip up real quickly for a salad, with a salad, and your meat for a dinner. This would be your vegetable. And this is called, like I said, I’m gonna do it right in the same pan, because that little bit of beef flavor that’s left in there will not hurt this, this meal at all, or this dish at all. We’re gonna take one pound of zucchini. Let me get organized here. And we’re gonna dice the zucchini on this one. Okay. And you want a pound of zucchini. Now that’s four small zucchini or two large, all right? And I’m going to put some oil, because I don’t think I have enough in here. I’m gonna add a little bit of oil. You wanna get your pan hot. This pan is pretty hot because I’ve just been using it. Okay. And for this, make sure they’re nice and clean, you wanna wipe them down. Make sure they’re clean. You’re going to dice it. So the easiest way to dice, leave that skin on, that’s not gonna hurt you, it’s wonderful. Just start cutting in strips. Keep the fingers out of the way please. Okay, we don’t need any accidents here. And then cut them in chunks. Pretty handy, huh? Think that’s good, Larry?

Beautiful.

Yeah, I tell ya, I’m really getting handy with these knives. Told them one of the other programs, I needed a Ginsu, and I would have been really in business here, but. Okay so we’re dicing up. And you know if you like a lot of zucchini, put a lot in there. Get your kids started to eat these kind of vegetables at a very young age. Don’t wait til they’re teenagers and say, “Oh, I just found out how good zucchinis are, “and how good they are for you, “and so we’re gonna start to eat them,” because they’ll fight you on it, but if you start when they’re little, just incorporating it into their diet, little by little, same with carrots and all the… Squash, oh squash was so wonderful, delicious. If they’re prepared the way that your family will like them, and, you know, that might take a little work on your part to find out the way they’re gonna like them, but it’s worth it to do it. I’m gonna do one more. Cut the stems off, we don’t need to use the stems. Okay. And if it has some bad spots, you wanna cut those out, because I won’t… Well I didn’t wanna cut the whole thing away, but they’re we go. We’ll chop these up. It’s a light flavor and they cook fast. That’s what I like about zucchini. Okay. If you’ve never tried it, if you’ve never made anything with, you know, go out and buy some, and can eat it raw, it doesn’t have to be cooked very much. Tastes like, reminds me of cucumbers. Sometimes if we have a salad, Paul will say, “Am I eating cucumbers or am I eating zucchini?” And I’ll have to tell him what it is, because it is very close. They look alike, they resemble each other. I think the cucumber is a little more moist with all the seeds. But after you have this done, there’s some other interesting things we’re gonna add to this skillet, as we go along. Ah, am I fast or what? Make sure there’s no fingernails connected in there please. We don’t need to cut fingers or nails, or anything else off. All right, we’ve got that started. The skillet is warming up. Next we’re going to add a whole can of whole kernel corn that has been drained. Drain it really well, we don’t want the moisture in. We’re gonna add that to the skillet. Get it all out of there. Okay. And after that we’re gonna take a small jar of pimento that has been drained. And you can chop this, or you can leave them into the longer pieces like this. I tend to like them in the longer pieces like that. Add that to the skillet. Okay, look at the colors. Is that pretty or what? The red, the yellow, and the green. Okay. And then we’re gonna have to season this, so what we want to use is a couple of cloves of garlic, and garlic flavors everything beautifully. I mean, beautifully. It’s, you can make it overpowering, or you can make it subtle. Whichever you wanna do. And all I’m gonna do is just cut these very fine, and chop them up. One thing you don’t, you wanna stay away from is getting big chunks of garlic in your foods, because if you’re the guy that gets served that, and you bite into that thinking it’s a piece of onion or something, boy are you in for a shock. Your taste buds will awaken severely. It’s just too strong. So what you wanna do is chop it up very fine, and some people even remove it before they serve it, but I wouldn’t do that in this dish, because I think it’s important to keep all of this together, okay? All right, let me get my little spatula here, so it’s easier… Figures I’d pick the one that’s got holes in it, to get this. It’s all right, we’ll get it. Okay, so we have corn, pimentos, and now we’ve added the garlic, and this is beginning to cook very nicely. I love color when you’re cooking. Keep that in mind. And this color is beautiful in this dish, this red, and yellow, and green, beautiful. All right, now we’re gonna add the seasonings. Like I said, there’s salt. This is about a teaspoon of salt. Now you can adjust that. If that’s too much, don’t put that much. And some freshly ground pepper. We’ve got those in there, let’s keep them mixing. I think we better turn this up to get it started just a little bit more. Okay. And we’re going to put the lid on this pan, and let this cook for about 10 minutes. Now you don’t want those zucchinis to end up mushy. It’s too far when you’ve gone to mush. They need to be fork tender, so that you could just put the fork in, and they’re still crisp, okay? And maybe turn, put it on a medium heat. Let me get my lid here. Okay. And we’ll come back and check on this, because there’s something else we have to add to this before this dish is finished. All right, so we have our casserole in the oven, our zucchini lasagna. We have our second dish that’s sauteing here on the stove. The third thing I want to make for you is a zucchini bread. I’ll tell you, this is one of the nicest, I think one of the really nicest, easiest recipes that you’re ever gonna find for a zucchini bread. And because it’s very basic, and very, very simple. We’ve put three cups of flour, just all purpose flour, not self rising flour, please. This is your all purpose flour. To that we’re gonna add two cups of sugar. Now this is not a lowfat recipe, or low calorie recipe. Not that bad, but it’s not that good either. All right, and it’s really important, in most times, unless your recipe tells you differently, it’s always good to combine all the dry ingredients first. Don’t mix them necessarily in the way they list them in a recipe, because sometimes, they don’t list them in the order that they want you to use them in. Put all the dry things together, which would be… And I’m gonna tell you what these spices are, and then we’re gonna add them to the flour and the sugar. This is teaspoon of cinnamon, teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 of a teaspoon of baking powder. Those are all dry, they go in with the flour and the sugar, okay? Now you need to mix that thoroughly together. And I know if you’re in a hurry, there’s a real big urge to say, “Oh, you know I’ll just put that together, “it’ll be okay, don’t worry.” No, you need to mix them together because those things are gonna make the bread raise a little bit. Have to be evenly distributed with the flour, or it’s not gonna work, okay? So, here we go. We’ve done that, now we’re gonna beat three eggs. So you put them in our bowl. And a nice fresh egg will stick together, it will not be watery and run all over the dish when you crack it. Something to remember, okay? Nice fresh eggs. And we’re gonna take a fork, and we’re gonna beat them like that. Okay. You say well how do you know when they’re beaten enough? Well beaten? When the guys says you hear them screaming, stop, and that’s when you know… No, that’s not really true. Anyway, those are pretty well beaten. Okay. Okay, there’s the egg. I like to scrape this out, to make sure we get all that egg out of there, okay? Need to check on my zucchini, one minute, because I don’t want it to cook too fast. It’s doing beautifully. I think we’re gonna turn it down just a nip, because if we don’t, it’s gonna cook too fast, and then it’s gonna be mushy. This should cook about 10 minutes. So we’ll turn that down to about there, good. All right, back to the bread. We’ve put three beaten eggs into the dry ingredients, and now we’re going to add some vanilla, which is a teaspoon of vanilla. One cup of, now I use canola oil, Crisco oil, whatever. I use the oil, and I found that oil in recipes tends to make a softer batter than if you use a heavy, like the lard or the butter. You can get a smoother batter with oil. I think we’re finding that out, especially since we can use the canola oils, and oils that are not as saturated with fats as the butters, and that type of thing is, okay? We have added everything now, up so far. There’s 1/2 a cup sour cream. Could use the low, called So Cream, it’s a kind of a substitute. It would work. We’re going to put our zucchini, which is two cups of grated zucchini. We took the zucchini, and the grater that you use to do your cole slaw, just grate it down. Two cups, add that. So you’re adding everything in at once here. You’re not mixing, stopping, adding. No, just put it all in there at once, okay? And then 1/2 a cup of raisins, 1/2 a cup of walnuts. Let’s see. The best thing to do, and I’ve learned this from experience, when you have, you feel like you have gotten everything in there, go back over your recipe one more time, because it’s too late once it’s in the oven, and you’ve forgotten something. Please. I know from experience, I know whereof I speak, because it’s happened to me lots of times. I said, “Oh, why didn’t I do that before?” But anyway, all you’re gonna do here is just mix this up real well. Okay. You’re mixing it, mixing it. And did you know that if you put the raisins in, and cover them with flour, and also walnuts, that they were less likely to drop to the bottom of your cake, or your bread when you’re making like a raisin bread, or a cake that has raisins or walnuts in? Give them a covering a flour. See that’s what happens, they don’t have anything to hold them into the batter, so they just sink to the bottom of the bread or the cake. But, if you will cover them with flour, just dust them with flour, even the flour that’s in the dough, if I would have put those in first, and then added the other ingredients, I could have done that, that would work that way. And they would stay up in the bread, rather than dropping, because they’re heavy, see, and they drop right to the bottom of the loaf of bread, or the cake, or whatever you’re making. So you’re mixing this. You could do the first step, first couple steps with a mixer if you wanted to. You can do it by hand, doesn’t matter. This is a heavy, thick dough, but you have to make sure… You see this? You think ooh it’s ready. That’s not ready, look what’s down there. You don’t want that to happen. You want to be sure that that flour, you must take it from the bottom, and mix it through. Because if you stir just from the top, you think, “Oh, it’s ready to go,” and it’s not. Make sure you get everything thoroughly blended. This is a heavy dough, like I said, so you need a nice big spoon to make sure that you get it thoroughly mixed. All right, I think we’re about there. When you’re at this point now, you’re gonna take two bread pans, okay? Two bread pans, and you have to grease them very, very well. Extremely well, because nothing worse than having a bread that you can’t get out of the pan, because you haven’t greased it enough. You’ll divide this in half, and, divide the dough evenly. Okay. Spread it around there. Try not to get it all over the pan, just get it in the bottom, because if you get batter up the sides, and it’s gonna bake, then your bread will not raise during the baking, like it should because that batter on the sides of the pan, at least that’s what I’ve found. Okay. Make sure you clean it out really well. Now you say why would you want two loaves? Well I’ll tell you, I would do one loaf for now, because the family’s gonna wanna try it, and the other loaf I would put in the freezer, wrapped very, very well, put it in the freezer and save it for a new family that moves into the neighborhood, or a special aunt that you wanna give her something, or how about Christmas? Save it for a holiday. It’s nice to go to your freezer, and have things that you have made a while ago, that you can serve when you don’t have the time to make it, bring it out. This will go in the oven, and this bakes a long time. This is 350 for 70 to 80 minutes. Let me speak here one minute, how you’ll know when it’s done. This applies to cakes, applies to breads like this, not the yeast breads, but this kind of a bread, when the time is up, that has been allotted for the cooking or baking, take a toothpick. In the thickest part, the thickest center of the bread, stick the toothpick down in. If it comes up and it’s clean, there’s no morsels of batter, no crumbs, nothing on it, it’s done. Take it out of the oven. If you put that toothpick in there, and it comes out, and there’s batter on it, you know that that needs to cook more. So you start by two minutes intervals. Set your timer two minutes. Check it again in two minutes. Check it again in two minutes. Check it again in two minutes. And when it’s done, that will not stick to the toothpick. Let’s go back to our zucchini that we’re cooking over here. I want to tell you what else we add. It’s just 1/2 cup, when this is done, and it is, it’s perfect, we’re gonna add 1/2 cup of provolone cheese, and we do that right before we serve it. And while we’re doing this, we’re gonna ask you to listen to this important message on how you can get today’s recipes. We’ll be right back.

[Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation, and a stamped self addressed business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148 1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy!, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy! issue number with your request. Well today’s program, we shared with you zucchini bread, and I’m gonna cut a little piece here. I like to cut it right in the middle, because no sense in letting that… Look at that, is that nice? With raisins and walnuts, okay? Cut a little piece, and have some cream cheese or some butter with, or just eat it plain. Next is our continental zucchini, and look what’s happened with that cheese, isn’t that wonderful? You know I had an afterthought, and maybe you could brown some ground meat, in that same skillet, and add it to it, and you’d have the whole meal, instead of just a side dish. And then, this is our zucchini lasagna, and I have added just a little bit of cheese on top, and you could do that too if you wanted to. Either the Romano, or you could use like mozzarella or provolone like we have. You don’t want this zucchini to get real mushy in there, so don’t bake it real, real long, but it’s perfect. Remember, the meat’s already cooked under there. The cheese is there. What a wonderful dish, and a wonderful idea for your family. Now remember, that’s recipe number 127. If you want any of these, or all of these, please be sure to send a self addressed stamped envelope. We’re so glad that you were with us today. It’s always nice to have our friends drop in on us. Ready or not, we’re glad when you come by. So until next time, be sure to join us, because you know what? It just wouldn’t be the same without you. We’ll see you then. Bye bye now.

[Announcer] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables, in Dravosburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholey’s, your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less at Wholey Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always Yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.